


i wanna be a drone

by jeannedarc



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Existential Dread, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Mystery, Other, Superstore AU, frisky storeroom antics, johnyong as exes, just a lot of fuckin fans, lumark as exes, parking lot fights, public intoxication, sicheng is baby and i hope nothing bad ever happens to him again, these tags can and will change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-05-02 10:45:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19197223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeannedarc/pseuds/jeannedarc
Summary: capitalism doesn't sleep; it has other people to do that for them.alternatively: everyone works in a big box store (or doesn't). everyone is tired. everyone is just trying to survive.





	1. i started out a mime, you know

**Author's Note:**

> so uh  
> kicks dirt  
> hello good day it's a beautiful time to be alive  
> please enjoy ... whatever monster this has become, in my head and onto the page?
> 
> super special thank you to the love of my life, who helped me plot this whole entire thing one night like it was a fever dream, and whose incarnation of it will always and forever be better than mine  
> also thank you to ami for giving it a quick runthrough, you're super appreciated and loved ♥

It’s a Tuesday. Tuesdays are notoriously bad. Cursed days, if you will. For some reason every suburban mom and disrespectful teen comes in on a Tuesday afternoon. Every. Single. One of them. Jaehyun doesn’t know it but the circulars change on Tuesdays, which mean the sales change, which means everyone and their mom is trying to get those sweet big-box-store deals before they’re picked over. It doesn’t apply to the coffee shop inside the store, and Yuta doesn’t seem to know much about it either, too busy plotting his next murder or whatever goes on inside his head when he isn’t talking to customers or preaching to Jaehyun about how coffee shops nowadays are an establishmentarian scam. How would Jaehyun know?

Jaehyun is on his break, sipping his half-price coffee, mourning the loss of his inner peace and instead thinking about what he’s going to do after work, when he gets the notification. Instagram. An account with a garbled keymash for a name. His heartbeat picks up just a fraction.

It’s a video. Shaky cam, as always, like the operator in question can’t seem to calm down for the life of them. This in itself is amusing. The shot is close to aerial -- someone must have climbed a shelving unit, again, and Jaehyun promises himself that he won’t go track down whoever’s responsible for the video and lecture them about safety. He’s been spending a little too much time listening to management’s preaching, he supposes.

In the vibrating shot are Jaehyun’s roommate, Mark, and the store’s loss prevention specialist, Taeyong, leaning against the doorframe to the deli department. A display of glistening fried chicken lurks beside them, and the PARTNERS ONLY sign is at the backs of their heads. Jaehyun perks, straightening in his chair only to lean in closer to his phone.

“Yeah, I have cats, too,” Taeyong is saying, and though the words are muffled, Jaehyun is well-versed in Taeyong speak, having worked with him for the last year or so and made him his overpriced sugary drinks with an extra shot of whatever flavour of the month he’s been asked to push. “I take them out on walks sometimes, when my dog has to go out. They kinda like it.”

Mark looks Taeyong dead in the eye, and Jaehyun just _knows_ that look, and knows what’s about to happen, and bites his lip to keep in a noise of deep distress. He says, with his entire chest, “So you like leashes?”

Both of them turn bright red. The person (people? alien? aliens?) filming the video shake harder and zoom in closer on their cherry cheeks.

They are silent. Neither of them look at each other. Then Mark awkwardly says, “So I’m just gonna go.” It can be seen that he shuffles out of frame, but the camera just zooms in closer on Taeyong’s face.

Taeyong doesn’t say anything, but he’s even more red than Mark is, all wide-eyed and haunted in that way of his. “Yeah, I, uh. Yeah.”

Mark disappears out of frame, presumably to disappear into one of his many hiding spots within the store. Jaehyun’s heart does that sinking thing that he’s always reading about in books. He’s going to talk to Mark about this, later, when they’re both at home and have the time to have a real conversation about it. 

The giggling in the video begins.

The post has over a thousand likes. It was posted seven minutes ago. Jaehyun can taste a PARTNERS ONLY meeting in the air, and he doesn’t like it. His break is over, anyway. He needs to show Yuta what happened, and he needs to make sure Mark is still breathing, wherever he is.

* * *

Johnny has been waiting here in the bare-bones manager’s office for the better part of an hour, fidgeting with his nametag, twiddling his thumbs, whatever it is he can do to quell the nervousness continuously rising up and slowing down deep within him. It isn’t as if there are fun posters, like there would be at literally any other managerial office he’s ever been in. Instead the walls are papered with workplace safety manuals and anti-union propaganda.

He wonders how there’s a room without a soul, and wonders why he’s in it.

Taeil comes eventually, looking haggard, more than usual. He usually bears the expression of someone who definitely doesn’t want to be here. Johnny understands, of course he does, because retail is hell for him personally, and Taeil’s job is the same, but bigger. He takes a seat at his desk, and the space between them is broad, intimidating. Taeil, though, just offers his exhausted smile.

“So, I see there was an update to that Instagram account,” he starts, friendly, though Johnny swears he can see both their souls slowly leaving their body. “You know I can’t keep letting this slide.”

Johnny swallows. “Yeah, I know,” he admits, albeit sheepishly. This has been going on for the better part of six months, and this isn’t the first time they’ve had this conversation.

“District wants to know what we’re going to do about it.” Taeil glances at the mostly-blank wall to his right, Johnny’s left. “I don’t know what to tell them, other than the fact that you’ve been on it and haven’t found a whole lot of anything.”

“It’s kind of a dead-end,” Johnny says quietly. “Every time I think I know who it is, it ends up not being them at all.” He doesn’t admit it, but he’s got a corkboard at home, covered in printed-out screenshots from the videos, employee ID photos, red string connecting everything. Like a joke, but sad, because it’s his reality. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get the mail to Pepe Silvia. Metaphorically, anyway.

“I know you’re doing your best,” Taeil sighs, leaning against the desk so deeply that his forehead touches his forearms. His spine pops. Johnny winces. “I’m just...I’m under so much _pressure_ from them, you know? They think it’s bad for the store. They don’t care that sales are up by two percent. They just care about their image.”

“It’s kind of gross, isn’t it?” Johnny hums, distracted by the part of Taeil’s hair, the only part of his boss available to him. “Things are going fine.” He’s about to spout off at the mouth for lack of anything useful to say, and he fidgets more, his nametag in his hands now rather than on his company-supplied, colour-blocked vest.

“They aren’t, and people might lose their jobs.” Taeil raises his head just enough that Johnny can look into the infinite, exasperated depth of his eyes, and he swears he sees Hell inside them, and doesn’t want it. “I don’t want anyone to get fired over this.”

“Neither do I.”

“And fixing this could be good for your career,” Taeil adds, a touch sceptical in the way he turns his head to look sideways at Johnny.

His stomach lurches at the mention of it. Career? “I don’t know about that,” he says, trying to be modest, when really he thinks he could fall out of his chair at the thought. 

“Just...think about it.” Taeil puts his hands over his face, drags them down his cheeks, tugging at his skin, and he’s so young, how does he have any right to look so ashy? But there’s a battleground here, and they both know it, and they’ll both engage in mutually-assured destruction before admitting that they know what they’re fighting over. “I know you don’t want to be an assistant manager forever.”

Johnny actively reins in a scoff of agreement. “Is there anything else we need to talk about, or is this just about, uh...social media popularity?”

“Yeah, um...I think that’s it. For now. We’re having a staff meeting about it later, anyway. Can you let everyone know? It’s at shift change.” Taeil gently waves him away, and it isn’t unkind, but it isn’t the sweetness Johnny is usually afforded, being the supposed golden boy and everything.

He takes his leave, and doesn’t even realise he’s out on the floor, his spot in front of the long stretch of registers waiting for him, until he’s already there. He thinks about it until it gives him a headache, and by that point there’s some entitled suburban mom who wants to know why her coupons from another store aren’t accepted here, and it doesn’t matter anymore who’s taking the videos. He hopes to give them an award when he finally catches them.

* * *

It’s three in the morning, Thursday, and Ten has found himself in sudden need of at least seven dozen eggs, if not more. He’s been working on his newest installation, and it’s a doozy, and he’s really excited about it -- so much he hasn’t slept in at least twenty-four hours. Doyoung can tell by the bags growing under his eyes. Gucci, Ten jokes, but Doyoung doesn’t really laugh about it. Good times. Fun roommate bonding.

He accompanies Ten to the store, because there’s only one store in the neighbourhood that’s even open at 3am that also has enough eggs to sate Ten’s need for creative amounts of destruction. It’s a nightmare as soon as his mind flickers from the paper he has due tomorrow evening and the destination Ten has in mind, again. It’s a shame he doesn’t realise it until they’re already tucked safe in the back of their Uber. He could’ve opted out.

“Please don’t harass anyone tonight,” he says in his most politely cold voice, temple against the window as he tries to stave off the migraine he knows is going to come while he’s on this trip.

“Harass,” Ten repeats, distaste obvious in his voice. “I’ve never harassed anyone in my life. Ever. What are you even talking about?”

“You know what I mean.” Doyoung lifts his head to look Ten dead in the eye. “Please do not ask to see the manager tonight.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Ten answers, all false mild and an evil grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

Doyoung, in this moment, hates three things: the hour of morning, eggs, and his roommate, all in pretty equal standing. He groans and pretends to be asleep for the rest of the ride, all seven minutes of it.

The fluorescence in the store doesn’t help the headache, nor does the constant buzzing of refrigeration units meant to keep eggs safe for human consumption. He can’t stand irony, drags his feet as he follows along behind Ten as he chatters on about...what is he even talking about? Doyoung has been too focused on the constant hum of freezer and fridge.

“I started out a mime, you know,” Ten is saying when Doyoung tunes back in with a brisk shake of his head.

“I sure wish you had _stayed_ a mime,” he says flatly.

“You would’ve hated it.” Ten’s ignoring him. It’s their game. “Everything was so dramatic for me, then, you know?”

“Only then?” 

“It was my life. I was always pretending stuff was there when it wasn’t. Talking to people that didn’t exist. Giving out invisible flowers. That’s how I met my first boyfriend, actually.”

“By giving him a fake gift?” Doyoung barks out a reluctant laugh, half-caught in his throat so that he nearly chokes on the sound. “That’s so you.”

“Why are you so bitter tonight?” Ten stops in the middle of the main aisle, flanked by a display of Cool Ranch Doritos on one side, a long, colourful row of cereal boxes on the other. “Is Yuta not giving you dick or something? I can have a talk with him, sexual activity in a relationship is one of the most important components of emotional connection, or something. I read it in some magazine a couple weeks ago. Which reminds me--”

Doyoung lets him say whatever he’s going to say, because now the idea of going over to Yuta’s place and folding himself inside those impossibly buff but willowy arms is running through his mind, and he would _much_ rather be doing that than anything else. He misses his boyfriend, in that way that people ache when they have a high fever, and it's only been a maximum of two days, not that he's much good at keeping track of time. He’d rather have his soul sucked out through his dick than by way of his first year of med school, but people don’t really have a choice in this, do they.

“...and that’s how I got away with adding a giant canvas cut into the shape of an anatomically correct dick.” They’re actually already standing in the dairy section where the eggs are, but Ten is completely ignoring them, looking for something. Doyoung already knows what this thing is, and rubs at his temples with both index fingers, a method of stress relief he’d learned in undergrad that only works in the sense of a placebo working for a cancer patient. “Where is he?”

Doyoung sees a colour-blocked vest disappear around the corner, a display of muffins, and Doyoung stalks after the poor, soon-to-be-harassed employee, if only so they can get this over with. “Hey, excuse me? We need some assistance over here.” He immediately hates enabling Ten’s behaviour, the way stomach acid can leak into other organs and cause corrosion, but what can he do? He’s got a paper to write and, apparently, some awkwardly aggressive flirtation to supervise.

The poor kid -- Doyoung has seen him around a few times; he’s close with Yuta’s teammate in the coffee shop, and he comes and checks in when he’s got a minute -- absolutely cowers. “Please not this again.”

Doyoung steels himself against the incoming wave of pity. It isn’t strong enough to fight the corrosion, anyhow. “I know, but he won’t leave until it happens, and I really want to go home.”

For a minute there’s pity in the kid’s -- Mark, Doyoung remembers at the last possible second, his name is Mark -- eyes, and he nods, grimly accepting his fate. “Alright. Just...don’t let him yell this time?”

Doyoung nods the same. “I’ll do my best.”

The two of them go back out to where Ten is waiting, plucking at the hem of his oversized t-shirt that hangs off his shoulder in a way he probably supposes is tantalising but really just looks like he rolled out of bed in someone else’s pyjamas. “Hi,” Ten chirps, all sunshine. “I want to see the manager. Do you know where he is?”

Resigned, Mark plucks the walkie-talkie from his belt. “Johnny to the dairy cooler, please. Johnny to the dairy cooler.” Doyoung doesn’t know who he feels worse for in this situation. (Kidding. It’s himself.)

It takes a couple minutes, but eventually the tall, pale and impossibly handsome shift manager wanders into their midst. His face does a strange thing that Doyoung can’t quite put words to at first. Then he’s right there in front of them, close enough that Doyoung can smell his faint hint of cologne, and takes Mark by the elbow, dragging him away.

“Wait, where are we going?” he stammers out, and Doyoung hates to admit it but the gentle shifting of his weight from foot to foot, shoulder to shoulder, is classic nervous.

Doyoung sighs. “You don’t want to see this. Come help me find something to kill my roommate with, yeah?”

“I can’t sell you guns if you say stuff like that,” Mark intones slowly.

Doyoung just laughs. “If you think I think a gun would take out that demon, then you must think I’m stupid.”

* * *

For what it’s worth, Ten doesn’t actually plan on dying tonight. Plan on being the key words. He knows Doyoung hates him right now, and that’s fair, because he kind of hates himself a little right now, if only because he didn’t actually ask after Johnny with a plan of his own in mind. He’s just sort of smiling in that way he knows boys who like him like, all curved eyes and happy to see Johnny right there in front of him.

Johnny doesn’t look all too happy, but that’s okay. Very few people can manage to be excited at three in the morning.

“Hey,” Johnny says after an awkwardly long pause between the two of them, “do you need anything?”

“Yeah, I needed to see you,” Ten replies. “I’m doing a show tomorrow. I was wondering if you were busy.” It’s a little too aggressive, but he’s genuinely a little worried about Mark getting dragged around the store by Doyoung, and whatever his roomie might be plotting. “And, you know, I was kind of wondering if, you know, if you _were_ too busy -- I know it’s short-notice, and everything -- if maybe we could hang out some other time.”

Johnny blinks a couple times, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing -- or, more accurately, like he thinks this is some sort of fever dream. That’s fine. Ten is used to that kind of reception. “Sir.” And he says it...at least sort of fondly. “Are you asking me on a date?”

Ten scoffs, kicks at the concrete floor with the toe of his low-heeled boot. “No, it isn’t a date. I can’t be on a date _and_ putting on a show.” When he looks up at Johnny, neck craning, it’s with the fluttering lashes he just _knows_ boys that like him are into.

But Johnny doesn’t react. It’s fucking weird. Ten wilts under the lack of power he seems to exercise in this situation. “I’ll think about it.” He pauses. “Where is it? I have to be back here tomorrow night. Kinda wanna sleep and catch up with Netflix.”

Ten quietly laments the day he fell in lust with a homebody. He rattles off an address, then puts on his grateful face. “It’d be easier if I could just text it to you.”

“If I give you my number will you stop telling Mark he’s doing a bad job?”

“He’s not, mostly. He _did_ try and run away from me just now--” Johnny interrupts with a groan, pushes his fingers through his hair, which Ten does his best not to find charming. “but that’s because I’m, like, hopelessly annoying.” That’s it. Boys don’t want cute smiles, boys want drama and self-deprecation they can fix with their dicks. Or, uh, their love. Right? Right.

Johnny doesn’t say anything about it, and Ten wilts a little further. “I don’t know. How do I know you won’t text me at 3am instead of coming in?”

Ten hesitates, then chances it anyway. “It’s been a month and you haven’t had security kick me out yet,” he points out, “so I’m guessing you’d probably like it either way.”

Blinking, Johnny pulls out his phone, plays with the screen a little, and hands it to Ten with a fresh new contact screen. “I still don’t know your name, y’know.” And again, it’s fond, but there’s an undercurrent of urgency that Ten isn’t altogether sure he doesn’t imagine. “You know mine. It isn’t really fair.”

Ten saves his contact info with a bunch of sparkly emoji after. He resists the heart. “Text me at 3am,” he says, encouraging. “I don’t sleep a lot. Usually busy cutting dicks into canvas.”

“I thought you did performance.” 

Ten has wandered over to the stacks of egg cartons, is checking them all for uncracked perfection, each one he lays his delicate hands on. “You have to create a set for a stage, you know?”

“If I come to your show tomorrow, and I probably can’t because I need to sleep like a human being, will you throw an egg at me?”

“The egg is a metaphor, so maybe.” Ten shrugs, playing at indifference. He is not entirely sure he could egg Johnny even if it _were_ for the name of art. He wonders when he lost his dedication to the cause. “I’m getting a lot of these, and I lost my roommate. Do you want to help me carry them to the front?”

Johnny shrugs. “I think that’s the service aspect of customer service.” He helps Ten look for eggs in quiet, Ten marveling at himself for being able to keep his mouth shut that long. “How many do you need?”

“At least seven. Probably eight.” At least he has it in him to look apologetic, even though spending time trying to puzzle Johnny out is something he’s been looking for nearly every night over the last month, either with Doyoung there or without. “I think eight might be better, in case someone else wants to be part of the experience.”

“What’s the metaphor?”

“You know how eggs are basically baby chickens that didn’t get to actually be baby chickens? It’s a metaphor for wanting to sleep with someone without wanting something to come of it.” Ten sighs, burdened by his own artistic genius. “You catch one to the face because it’s societally pushed on you that you should be ashamed of yourself for just wanting sex instead of wanting to make something meaningful.”

“Sounds controversial.” Ten pretends not to notice that Johnny, with his strong arms full of egg cartons, is blushing all the way down his throat. “Please don’t hit me with an egg.”

“I won’t,” Ten promises as they reach the registers. “Just...think about it. Text me when I leave? And that way I can send you the address.” He pauses. “You don’t have to come, really, I just thought it’d be cool to have you there.”

“I’ll think about it,” and here Johnny is all business. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

And sure, it’s customer service jargon, Ten knows about that, but that doesn’t mean he’s any less liable for the train of thought that rushes around the inside of his skull at the implication. “No, I think I’m okay for the night.” He congratulates himself for not making any comments on Johnny’s obvious big dick energy, and carefully perches his eggs, then Johnny’s, on the conveyor belt, leading up to a disgruntled looking cashier. “Text me anyway. Even if you don’t want to go.”

And alright, Ten is _dying_ for Johnny to be there, because boys like drama and emotional damage, but that doesn’t mean he has to _act_ pushy about it. He knows the line between creepy and well-intentioned, has been faced with it a lot of times over the past few years, wouldn’t dare to cross it.

Johnny just laughs quietly as he makes his retreat to do other managerial things the likes of which Ten can barely imagine. “Have a good night. Be safe.”

The line isn’t long; Ten doesn’t get to text Doyoung that he’s leaving until he’s sitting in the rest area near the front door that it’s time to go. He really wants help with these eggs, but Doyoung shows up with a basket full of white candles and a canister of salt. Ten eyes the items in his hands suspiciously. He doesn’t want to ask questions, but his mouth gets the better of him. “Are you practicing witchcraft tonight?”

Doyoung laughs shortly. “I’m waiting until the full moon and then I’m rebanishing you to whatever hell you escaped from.”

Ten doesn’t really get it, but laughs anyway.

When they’re safely tucked in another Uber to make the quick trip home, Ten is fooling around on his phone. “The full moon is tomorrow,” he points out, glancing between his phone’s slightly-cracked screen and Doyoung’s profile as it catches in the dim glare of the streetlamps whizzing by.

Doyoung is half-asleep, doesn’t turn to him to answer. “Wouldn’t it be cool if I got rid of you during your show.” Ten doesn’t get this either.

Johnny texts him as soon as they’re back in the apartment, Doyoung begging off to bed and Ten left to deal with eggs and way more candles than are considered safe, alone. 

_Hey :)_  
_Give me the address? So I can figure out if I have time to make it before I gotta be back here lol_

Oh, God, he’s one of _those_ texters. Ten’s got his work cut out for him, in a lot of ways, he decides as he admires the stacks of eggs on the table. While he contemplates a reply he also weighs the benefits of using rotten eggs at the show. Anything for the art, right?

_how bout i pick u up instead?_

 _From my apartment? Moving kinda fast huh? :)_

Ten almost knocks over a carton of eggs out of sheer spite. He’s already put the candles into their one bookshelf, which is mostly empty save more candles (Ten’s, never once used for ritualistic purposes) and the few books that Doyoung hasn’t traded in at the end of the semester in the hopes of getting a full refund (he never has but he keeps trying anyhow). The salt is in the pantry, and Ten quietly hopes Doyoung forgets all this business about demon-unsummoning. Not that he agrees he’s a demon. He just doesn’t really vibe with the negativity of it all.

_i’m just trying to walk u home after_  
_u’re a gentleman it’s what you deserve_

Johnny doesn’t message him again after that, and that’s valid. He isn’t trying to be pushy, and in fact pushes it out of his mind, eventually deciding against rotten eggs -- he can’t abide the smell, and the gallery probably won’t like it too much either -- and at long last collapsing into bed.

He can’t hear Doyoung’s telltale soft bunny snores from the next room over (that tragic but cute overbite, it fucks with him, Ten thinks in a fair amount of despair for his friend) which means he’s probably studying or listening to a book or something. He thinks about what this means, and whether or not he’s in trouble, then decides it’s better to find out later than worry about it now, and rolls over and sleeps for the first time in what feels like a decade.

* * *

Later that morning, after Mark gets home from his shift, Jaehyun is awake bright and early, a little _too_ happy for Mark’s liking. He’s made breakfast, albeit sort of poorly, the smell of fried egg sticking to teflon filling the apartment, and there are some cinnamon rolls from the coffee shop alongside a cup of milk. “Hey,” he greets, all chipper for 7am, and Mark looks at the cinnamon rolls he usually craves with the passion of a dying man with deep suspicion. 

“What’d I do now,” he deadpans, exhaustion filling his every bone and muscle. “Are we getting kicked out? Did I get fired and no one told me?”

“Nah, I wanted to talk about the leashes thing.” Jaehyun grins, leaning casual and cool against the divide between the kitchen and their miniscule dining area where the breakfast is waiting to be consumed. The smile goes a little sideways, crooked, deviation from what is clearly a well-meaning gesture, but Mark can’t really tell because he’s too busy fighting an inner war against those sweet, sweet buns he craves. “Because really, that kind of warrants a conversation, dude.”

Mark whines, drops his bag full of school books and various work detritus at the feet of one of their dining chairs, and plunks down in the next one over, folding in on himself immediately. The chair beneath him creaks out a threat, but as per usual, Mark ignores that, too. “Can we not talk about the leashes thing?” he implores. “Just because you _know_ it’s me looking like an idiot doesn’t mean you have to _acknowledge_ it.”

“Uh, right, I think I do?” And Jaehyun sits across from him, mimicking his movements so they’re on eye-level, and Mark loves Jaehyun, he really does, but he absolutely can’t handle looking him in the eye right now. “You aren’t acknowledging it.”

“That’s because literally everyone else in the store has given me shit about it.” Mark groans.

Jaehyun’s got that twinkle in his eye, the one that lets Mark know he’s about to say something wicked bad. “Do _you_ like leashes?”

“No!” He flails his limbs like a vanilla octopus, embarrassed up to the tips of his ears. “I mean. I don’t think so?”

“That’s cool. Our lease says we can’t have pets. I think that extends to pet boys, too.”

Mark, despite his better judgment, is mortified all over again, face scrunching into something he knows is unrecognisable. “Anyway, guess I’ll die,” he mumbles, mouth muffled by the skin of his forearm. “Seriously, you think it’s that big a deal?”

“What, that Taeyong probably knows you’re, like, hopelessly in love with him and think about taking him around town on a leash of his own?” Jaehyun gently ignores Mark’s yip of protest. “Nah, that’s not a big deal at all. What _is_ a big deal is that you clearly haven’t gone back and watched the video.”

“What do you mean,” Mark tries to ask, but it sounds more like keymash, verbally.

“He was kind of into it. You didn’t look at his face when you were, iunno, _right in front of him_?”

“If you said something like that to Yuta or Doyoung, how would you feel? I couldn’t look him in the eye.” No longer able to help himself, Mark plucks a cinnamon roll from its disposable metal tray and takes a big, doughy bite, chewing it over thoughtfully as processed sugar icing floods his mouth. If he’s going to die of embarrassment he might as well get a last meal out of the deal.

“I would feel like at least I asked, you know.” Jaehyun reaches across the table, gently pats Mark’s arm. “Finish eating. Get some sleep. I won’t be home until--”

“Until this evening, yeah, I know.” Mark groans. “I was going to get on the Uber shift…”

“No.” Jaehyun is firm about this even as he’s slipping out of his chair, grabbing his polyester work number off the back of the couch where it’s been draped this entire time. “Sleep first. Uber later. Our bills are covered for now, okay?” He comes back to clap Mark on the shoulder. “I mean it.”

Then Jaehyun is gone. Mark drags himself to bed, slowly shucking off his clothes and leaving them in a trail across his bedroom. He’ll pick them up later; when he gives himself the command to do it now his brain just fills with TV static, something that happens after he works the graveyard shift. He flops into his unmade bed, half dangling off the edge of it, still-socked feet wiggling as he rolls around in the covers trying to get comfortable.

For a long time, he stares blankly at the ceiling, and then realises that sleep isn’t coming to pay a visit. He gets up, finds his work jeans, plucks his phone from their back pocket.

There’s a message there. A couple, actually, but most of them are from his mom and don’t technically count because she knows he’s not going to answer until the middle of the afternoon at the absolute earliest. 

Taeyong, though, is high priority.

_hey_  
_so uh i saw the instagram thing on facebook earlier…_

Mark drags his hand over his face, silently asking God why Mark lives don’t matter.

_i just thought you should know that it’s okay, i don’t feel any kind of way about it, but i figured you might wanna know you’re famous now_

At least that gives him context for the messages from his mom, which mainly ask about whether or not Mark is taking care of his allergies. Is she clowning him right now? No, she’s too nice for that. But she did link him to the Facebook post containing his infamy and shame. The comments are _definitely_ clowning. Mostly GIF replies about taking his shot and missing. Why does the entire internet get to decide he was taking a shot? Mark is all about choice, even though it seems like no one wants him to be able to make one himself.

He thanks Taeyong, promises they can hang out later, and rolls over, tucking his face into his pillow. There is nothing he wants more than to scream, but with the way he lays it’s like he has no mouth with which to do it.


	2. you aren't exhausting; missing you is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yuta gets attacked by the sugar daddy. jaehyun likes purple on yuta. mark unfortunately revisits a childhood nickname.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the first section of this is like. vaguely sexual? not too spicy. mentions of infections. mentions of fistfighting and bloodshed.   
> thanks again to ami who is endlessly complimentary and helpful, and to the loml who encourages me to keep going even when i'm not sure i'm doing any good at all.  
> please enjoy (⊃｡•́‿•̀｡)⊃━☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ

The downfall of the coffee supply storeroom, besides the fact that it’s inside of a store and therefore feeding into the capitalist agenda, is that it’s always unreasonably hot. Probably has something to do with the machines parked against the adjacent wall, always steaming, brewing coffee for the ungrateful shopping masses. It isn’t the first time Yuta’s noticed it, of course, because this isn’t the first time he and Doyoung have snuck into this space for the sole purpose of some good old fashioned American teenager making out. (They are neither American nor teenagers, but who’s keeping score?) 

The other downfall is that it’s a supply room. Yuta becomes all too aware of this when Doyoung, hands at his hips and lips at his jaw, backs him into a tall stack of boxes and one, half-empty and filled with packets of saccharine aplenty, falls from its precarious position, dumping its contents all over Yuta’s head.

He whines, hands going to Doyoung’s shoulders, trying to disengage from the all-too-enthusiastic hickey being left at the join of his neck and shoulder, the only safe place that his work uniform covers. Doyoung pulls away, looks up just a hair, and plucks a pink parcel from behind Yuta’s ear.

“You okay?” Doyoung asks, and Yuta knows what people think of his boyfriend, but in moments like this Yuta adores him all the more for cutting the babying and getting right to the point. “Did the box hit you?”

Yuta indicates his shoulder with a lazy hand. “I’m being attacked by the man,” he says, all droll, lips curling up into a hazy approximation of his usual thousand-watt grin. “Or, uh, the sugar daddy? I don’t know.” He shrugs. “My break is over in 20...do you think we have enough time to have sex?”

“Are you trying to have sex right now?” He can see it in Doyoung’s eyes that he’s trying to work out logistically a position that would work in this tiny of a space.

“It’s hot.” Yuta indicates the condensation that constantly collects on the wall between the storeroom and the coffee machines. “I’m trying to take some clothes off.” He takes a shuffling half-step away from Doyoung to play at tugging his shirt over his head. He gets a little too far with the bit, realises his top button is still buttoned, get his head stuck in his collar, and trips over the box that had so unkindly assaulted him a moment ago. He whines again, louder this time, and with all the childishness in his body kicks the box across the floor. 

“I mean, I’m not opposed?” But Doyoung is definitely opposed, judging by the question in his voice.

“C’mon,” and now Yuta’s joking, shrugged out of the polyester that had so kindly clung to his skin, left only in an undershirt and flashing Doyoung a good look at the strength of his arms, his shoulders. “I’ve always wanted to try using sugar syrup as lube.”

Doyoung does not even _pretend_ to find this amusing, and Yuta sulks for it. “Do you want infections, babe? This is how we get infections.”

“I know,” Yuta huffs, deflating and holding his shirt at his side, admission that this race probably isn’t going to get started. “What’s up? You seem extra stressed. You want me to rub your shoulders?”

Doyoung leans against an old seasonal display, stacked behind the clapboard they use over the summer when all their specials are happening. He’s got his hands draped over his lap and for a second Yuta has to fight his sexual lizard brain in order to keep from thinking he’s got something to hide. “I just, you know, I’m really tired,” and he sounds it. “I have seven different assignments due in the next week, and my GPA dipped a little because I showed up late to that exam, and Ten is…” He lingers over the words, clearly choosing them with care, not wanting to involve Yuta in his roomie drama. He’s always so considerate. Like he actually cares whether or not Ten and Yuta are friends. (They are not, and Yuta shudders at the memory of last Saturday, when they didn’t get home in time to sexile him and had to make awkward conversation that Ten mostly dominated talking about his upcoming show.) “Ten is Ten,” he finishes, finally. “And it’s exhausting. Everything is exhausting.” He blinks, tipping his head up to look Yuta in the eye. “Not you. You aren’t exhausting. Missing you is.” Another half-second hesitation. “I didn’t say that.”

“Noted.” Yuta crosses the gap between them and takes Doyoung’s face in his hands, bumping their foreheads together, pooling their collective storeroom sweat in the hollows at either side of their noses. “Just remember that capitalism never sleeps and we take on his sleep debt so he doesn’t have to. And also, Ten is going to keep being Ten no matter what you do, so maybe it’s cool not to have expectations of him.”

Doyoung blinks, playing at incredulous, though Yuta swears he can see the inspiration dawning over his expression as he files this information away for later. “You know I know you’re smart,” he says slowly, and it’s clear he’s fighting it but the smile tugging at his lips wins out. “Why would you even pretend to be that armchair psychologist idiot, right now.”

“Because you like that idiot,” Yuta singsongs, and kisses the very corner of Doyoung’s mouth, a tender gesture, the sort they save for when they’re alone. Like this, Yuta muses, and does it again. “You like me.”

“I do, sometimes,” Doyoung agrees, sighing his resignation. “It’s so tragic. I deserve better than the first gorgeous jock who would have me.” Yuta scoffs out a laugh and whacks Doyoung across the shoulder with his shirt.

Yuta, in fact, tries to do it a second time, just out of vengeance -- it doesn’t sting, Doyoung never leaves the edge on -- but the shirt catches on the single bare bulb dangling over their head, the sole source of light in this fucking cabinet of a room. It buzzes loudly and goes dark, flickering out so quickly it pops with its own effort. Yuta takes Doyoung’s hand immediately, squeezing, but in the darkness Doyoung slips away. 

“Soooooo, about that sugar syrup as lube idea.” He knows Doyoung can’t see it but he waggles his eyebrows anyway.

Doyoung thwaps him across the shoulder playfully, then pulls him by the collar of his undershirt into another kiss, open-mouthed and too warm for comfort, laughing all the while.

* * *

Whenever Yuta goes on break, and especially when he goes on break when Doyoung is around, Jaehyun waits for him to come back.

It isn’t like it’s idle time; there are just enough customers to make it seem less pathetic and more romantic that he’s waiting not to be alone. He’s perfected his lattes, his cappuccinos, the most flirtatious way in which to ask for whose name to write on the cup. He’s working on the new special, something with berries that he can’t remember the super-fancy name for. He’s getting work done, and usually only gives away a couple more accidental freebies than he normally would.

Still, he waits for Yuta to come back, because he and Yuta are like...partners in crime, sort of. If making coffee and bringing down the system from within (Jaehyun doesn’t know anything about that, not really, but Yuta is teaching him a little more every day) is a crime.

Well, there’s that, and the fact that he wants to kiss Yuta sometimes. That’s definitely a thing. Not that he talks about it or anything. Not that he fixates on it while he’s working, which gets him into _more_ little bouts of giving away stuff for free that is definitely not free.

Today’s one of those days. Yuta’s break was supposed to be over fifteen minutes ago, but he and Doyoung slipped into the storeroom and haven’t come out. Occasionally, from the crack under the door (or rather due to the fact that both Yuta and Doyoung have stupidly cute laughs), Jaehyun can hear giggling, and at some point he hears a loud buzz and a pop that is probably too sexual in nature for him to want to understand while he’s in the middle of work. 

He doesn’t drag about it, keeps up the positive energy, but Jaehyun is tired. Tired enough that when his thoughts turn to Yuta, and occasionally to Doyoung (he doesn’t have a preference between them, he’s just worked with Yuta for a year now and Doyoung has only been in the picture for a little more than half that time), it makes things...worse. Like he’s slipping through some kind of break in the space-time continuum and everything is turning to maple syrup on a cold day around him.

Maple syrup on a cold day sounds really good. He misses winter drinks. They were more fun.

He glances up, and there’s a customer -- no, not just any customer; Ten, looking kind of annoyed, which is a hot look for him but Jaehyun’s a little scared of him, if he’s being honest -- standing there at the register. “Hey.” He sort-of smiles, in that pinched way he does, which is probably the only smile of his Jaehyun has ever seen. “Is Doyoung still here?”

“Oh. Yeah. They’re in the back.” Jaehyun glances around conspiratorially, and then lowers his voice to tell Ten, “I think they’re hooking up.” He blinks, and hopes to sound serious. “What do you think that’s like?”

“What do I--” Ten makes a face that is somewhere between disgust and abject horror. “What do you mean, _what do I think that’s like_. Have you had sex? I don’t think theirs is any weirder than anyone else’s. At least I hope not. I know Doyoung fucks in my bed out of spite.”

Suddenly, Jaehyun has A Lot to think about.

Eventually, after a lot of uncomfortable staring and Jaehyun offering to make Ten something to drink (Ten refuses, but isn’t really _mean_ about it, which is new and exciting), Doyoung and Yuta, weird two-headed stuck-together sexy hybrid monster that they are, exit the storeroom. Yuta’s gently massaging Doyoung’s shoulders, and Doyoung is rolling his neck like he’s a prize fighter about to take on someone important. “Hey,” Yuta says.

Jaehyun sniffs. “You were gone for an hour.”

Yuta shrugs, detaching himself from Doyoung, who is looking at Ten like he’s a carrier of some kind of disease that infects only by eye contact. “Sorry. I had to make some kind of demonstration today.” 

“It’s cool. I only gave away, like, two things while you were gone, anyway. It’s been kind of quiet.” Jaehyun eyes Doyoung with something like fear. It’s really the way in which he usually looks at Doyoung, but with less arousal, because he’s thinking about what kind of monster it takes to have sex in your roommate’s bed. “I’m glad you’re back, though. I clocked you back in already. I think there’s a sale or something in housewares, I haven’t seen management at all.” 

Doyoung saunters up to the counter in almost spooky tandem with Yuta slipping in behind it. “Hey, I’ll see you later?” He glances over his shoulder. “Can I come over to yours? I just…”

“Yeah, hey, it’s cool,” Yuta says with a reassuring smile, the one that Jaehyun knows well enough to recognise murder inside of. “I’ll order in and you can do your homework while I work out or something.”

It takes a very, very large amount of self-restraint for Jaehyun not to make a joke about them being together and working out. Well, self-restraint and the fact that he can’t really find the punchline, but that’s okay. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Doyoung just smiles sort of tiredly. Ten makes a noise of distaste, and Doyoung immediately rolls his eyes, reaches out to tug at a lock of Yuta’s hair, his own weird brand of affection. Then he and Ten are gone, exiting the safety of the coffee perimeter and going out into the capitalist wasteland.

Jaehyun eyes the new mark on Yuta’s neck, faint but there all the same. “So, uh, you guys had fun?”

“Not really,” Yuta shrugs. “Oh, that reminds me. The lightbulb blew out, back there. We need to call maintenance and have them fix it.”

“...I could fix it,” points out Jaehyun, moving to give the espresso machine a quick cleaning, just to keep his hands busy. Definitely not so he can hyperfixate on whatever ‘not really’ means when he and Doyoung were supposed to be hooking up.

“You don’t get paid to fix lightbulbs,” Yuta sighs, and goes to disassemble it with him, shifting so that his shirt collar is displaced as he pulls out the grounds drawer.

“I get paid regardless. Why can’t I fix a lightbulb?” He stares, focused completely on the machine now, just for a minute, just long enough that Yuta can shoot him a Look for not moving along like they’re supposed to.

“We can talk about that later.” Yuta grunts softly with exertion as he finishes taking it apart, and Jaehyun has to wonder whether or not he’s making this hard intentionally. (By this, Jaehyun means him. Jaehyun is kind of hard. It’s the grunting.) “Hey, did Ten say anything weird to you just now?”

“I mean…” Jaehyun turns where he stands, drops old grounds in the trash, unscrews the brewhead and deposits it in the sink to be washed. “Not any weirder than usual.” He hesitates. “He said you two have sex in his bed.”

Yuta gags, goes to the counter and leans against it, watching as Jaehyun moves around, disassembling and reassembling components here and there, starting cleaners through the machine itself. “I would never betray anyone like that.” He looks haunted, the way Taeyong looks sometimes when he’s had a long day, or the way people who claim to have seen demons in their basements sometimes look on those late-night TV shows Jaehyun pretends he doesn’t bingewatch when he can’t sleep. “And anyway, Ten’s bed is too big. Puts too much distance between people. It’s weird, considering he sleeps alone most of the time.”

“Most of the time?”

“Yeah. Not the other night. We had to go to my place. The door was deadbolted and everything. But every other time it’s been us kicking him out.”

Jaehyun suddenly can’t talk about this, mainly because he’s a little scared of Ten, and is afraid that talking about even his less intimate sexual details will somehow summon him. “You guys kick him out a lot?”

“We’ve been together awhile. Stands to reason. Friday nights are ours. It’s one of the only times we can get for sure, since Ten’s always doing one of his weird art shows at someone’s gallery, or on the street, or sometimes in the subway if he can get in there without security chasing him off.” He finishes his task, rejoins Jaehyun, who’s ducked under the machine as best he can and is wiping its underneath gently with a damp cloth. “You good? I’m here.” 

Jaehyun lifts his eyes just for a second, and he can see right up Yuta’s nose, and it’s stupid but he even looks good from this angle, each one of his eyelashes available for the counting should Jaehyun choose. He opts out, because he’s really aware how weird it is that he even wants to, and finishes up wiping the machine instead. “Yeah, let’s just…” And he takes the parts from Yuta’s waiting hands, puts everything back together as it’s supposed to be for the time being.

Teamwork, he thinks in pure agony. He feels like even when he blinks he can see the shape of Doyoung’s mouth etched purple into Yuta’s skin. He wishes he were jealous.

“Hey, so,” and he gets the eerie suspicion that someone’s watching him, but it’s only for a second before he’s shaking it off, “how do I get in the middle of that Friday night?”

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Jaehyun would really rather be a man of his word, a reflection of the conversation he’d had with Mark a couple days earlier.

Yuta’s so startled he drops the other pieces of the machine on the floor. “Fuck.” He has to clean them again, lets Jaehyun pick them back up and hand them to him. “Uh. Pardon me. What?”

“I said what I said.” Jaehyun grins, hoping to steer away from wolfish and into the vague idea of impossibly sexy.

Yuta looks at him like he’s trying to decide which order to make first in a long line of customers. Like he’s overwhelmed. Like Jaehyun had always had two heads, and suddenly sprouted a third. He turns and throws the pieces into the sink, and Jaehyun jumps this time. “Literally what the fuck?”

“I mean, I like you guys.” Like is obviously not a strong enough word. “I’ve always wanted to try it. And no offense but hooking up in the storeroom really lends itself to the idea that you’re into some weird shit. Both of you,” he adds, before Yuta gets a chance to protest. “Doyoung’s not stupid. Neither are you.” He whistles out a low note, tipping his head just slightly to the right, catching sight of the mark standing out bold against Yuta’s skin. “You don’t have to answer me now. Actually, if it’s too awkward or you guys are afraid I’m gonna be awkward if you say no, you don’t have to answer me at all. But I figured I might as well say something in case you guys think it’s weird if I accidentally listen in and like it.” He throws his rag into the sink from a distance, nothing but net. “I’m gonna, uh, go on break.”

Yuta does not appear to know what to say, and just sort of nods, sheet-pale with confusion in his eyes, stepping aside so Jaehyun can exit through the narrow swinging doors that separate them from the main horde of the bourgeoisie. 

At the very least, Jaehyun feels better. He whistles all the way to the front of the store, out the front door, into the sunshine. God, it’s a beautiful day.

* * *

This time it’s Mark confronting Jaehyun. Except Mark is about the least confrontational human being alive, so it’s really him flopped on the couch watching the latest update on the store’s Instagram account for the seventeenth time in a row when Jaehyun gets home. “Hey,” he says, all breezy like he’s having the time of his life.

Mark is _not_ having the time of his life. He holds up his phone. “Dude, you’re famous,” he all but squeaks, kicking his legs to sit up in one swoop. This is a mistake, because every vertebra in his spine pops simultaneously, and he is immediately brought back down by his own lack of momentum to rest on the couch cushions in a great deal of distress. “Did you see it?”

Jaehyun kicks off his shoes and treads the threadbare area rug they’d stolen from leftovers of a garage sale, tripping over the lump in the floor they’ve always been too lazy to fix, as he always does. He bends at the waist, squinting down at Mark’s phone. “Nah, I left after that for my break. They’ve posted it since I left.”

“That makes absolutely no sense,” Mark says slowly, taking his phone back to watch the superimposition of a mic drop over Jaehyun’s graceful exit, adjusting the volume on his phone so the 90s radio airhorns don’t disrupt their conversation. “I didn’t think you’d actually say it.”

Jaehyun shrugs and drops his bag at the foot of the couch. “Might as well, right?”

Mark thinks about this for just a second, internalising it. Might as well.

While he orders pizza -- their Wednesday night tradition, the place down the street cheap and it still arrives hot even when the delivery guy is on foot -- Jaehyun busies himself rinsing a couple dishes. Mark plays on his phone, flicking through his Instagram feed, and pointedly ignoring the notification on his phone.

Taeyong. It’s always Taeyong. And it isn’t that he doesn’t want to talk to Taeyong; the opposite is true, in fact. He wishes he could bring himself to. He doesn’t get nearly as nervous doing it as he used to, and while it’s true that texting is a big part of that -- Taeyong doesn’t have to listen to those ridiculous voice cracks of his, or watch him struggle to articulate half a sentence let alone facilitate half of a whole conversation -- the nervousness was never particularly bad in the first place. Mark gives himself a pat on the back for that. It’s what he deserves.

Still, there’s something that holds him back. Maybe it’s the permanently terrified look in Taeyong’s eyes that pops up when almost anyone talks to him (Mark knows it doesn’t apply to him, but has long since stopped trying to figure out the significance of _that_ little puzzle). Or maybe it’s the fact that Mark thinks about what he has -- a roommate, two jobs, almost half of an online degree at a somewhat good online school -- and realises that Taeyong probably doesn’t want that.

Most days, when most people talk to him, Taeyong seems to want to be left alone.

But then again, he’s always sending Mark little messages. Snippets of tracks he’s working on, alone in his apartment, surrounded by animals, presumably on leashes. Memes he finds funny, or something Mark missed at the store on one of his rare days off.

Mark answers eventually. He always does. Today it’s an instrumental for a track posted to SoundCloud, a pleased emoji attached. Taeyong is raw, and vulnerable, but smooth in a way that Mark wishes he could somehow replicate -- not to put on, a false persona or a mask or whatever metaphor he feels like using that day, but just so that he knows what it looks like on a more intimate basis. Not like he’s got the balls to find out what it looks like on Taeyong himself.

He isn’t sure what he’s done to earn that level of trust, from Taeyong. It would normally warrant him reviewing their friendship as it’s developed over the last year or so, but today it doesn't. Today he’s focused on the music. 

He listens to the track quietly, interrupted only by Jaehyun going to answer the door, a profusely sweaty pizza delivery child handing off their order and taking his tip with a bright smile and an amazing level of thanks. Mark secretly thinks the poor bastard’s just relieved to feel the blast of A/C that slaps him in the face, but he’s happy the dude is happy anyway.

Jaehyun’s there, then, settling the pizza box on their chipped-up coffee table between them and flopping down at the other end of the couch. To his credit (or maybe to his pain’s credit), Mark hasn’t moved, so it ends up that Jaehyun is half-sitting on Mark’s feet. “Dude, why,” Mark whines in his most manly voice. 

“Because you love me enough to tolerate it, duh.” The pizza box gets flipped open, and Mark gets the first slice. Customary, since he is the baby of the house. “What’re you listening to?”

“Something Taeyong sent me,” Mark mumbles around a mouthful of burning-hot cheese, dripping gently onto his chin. “It’s nice. He’s really talented.”

“Is he?” Jaehyun makes a similar noise of something like conversational discontent. “I didn’t know he made music.”

That really sort of opens it up, and later Mark will probably blame himself for shooting off at the mouth, but it isn’t like he has to worry about being vulnerable around Jaehyun. “He’s been sending me stuff for...iunno, a couple months now. It’s really good. Every single piece has a different vibe to it. Sometimes he’s on the track and sometimes he just makes it. And he’s really cool if people find his stuff and want to use it, or want him to work on something with them. The last thing he sent me was something he did with, like...a bunch of girls trying to make 90s R&B happen again? And it doesn’t sound like something he’d do at all but he was really good, anyway.” His cheeks colour faintly, and he glances away, biting into the pizza so it no longer threatens to splash violent pizza sauce on the inside of his wrist.

“It sounds like you really like his stuff.” Jaehyun nods knowingly, and it’s nice, not to be teased, or lectured, or told that it’s okay to move along. He wants to set his own pace, and honestly, he’s not as close to Taeyong as any of the other guys he’s dated. All two of them. “Does he know you like it?”

“I mean, I tell him.” He holds up his phone for demonstration.

“Yeah, but it’s one thing to say it over text…”

He takes back his glowing review of Jaehyun’s friendship for the moment. “I know. I should _say_ something. It’s just weird. If he doesn’t talk about it to my face, and I don’t talk about it to his, then it doesn’t really exist. Or it does.”

“Ah, yeah, Schrödinger's secret music career,” Jaehyun agrees, grinning and barely even flinching when Mark affectionately punches him in the shoulder. “He’s never talked to you about it in person?”

“Not once. I think it makes him nervous, like he’s not allowed to have a side gig or something.”

“Between you and me I think _everything_ makes Taeyong nervous.” Jaehyun grins in that almost wolfy way of his, all shadows and teeth that glow in their low lamplight. “I think _you_ make him nervous, especially.”

“Why?” Mark blinks, finally sits up and drags his feet out from under Jaehyun so that he can have the feeling in his ankles back.

“Iunno, Morkle, why do you think?” And fuck, Mark hates that nickname, it reminds him of high school, but he accepts it from Jaehyun, because Jaehyun wouldn’t do anything untoward intentionally. “Just...think about it. You don’t have to do anything. I know you two don’t really get to hang out outside of work. I know that’s hard for you.”

“Maybe I’ll ask him to hang out,” sniffs Mark as he finishes the crust of his pizza, having wolfed down the inbetween of his slice, the Meat of it if you will, sometime during the conversation without even noticing. 

“That’s progress,” Jaehyun agrees.

Mark’s phone goes off. The store account is live. That’s weird. Usually it’s just videos posted hours after the fact (as evidenced by Jaehyun’s sudden infamy), a specific sort of artistry gone into them. If artistry can be applied to complete and total chaos, anyway. He tunes in, gestures that Jaehyun move in so they can both get a view.

It is, much to Mark’s dismay, one of the infamous parking lot fights, usually taking place out in the last row of parking spaces, and usually between testosterone-filled douchejocks with nothing better to do and no outlet for their energy.

A voice, a bit rumbly, a lot familiar, is narrating the scene like a golf commentator. “You know it must be serious,” the voice dictates, “if there’s a girl involved.”

There are, in fact, three girls. Two of them -- one tall and willowy and beautiful and throwing kisses to the crowd inbetween bouts of stuff-removal, the other tiny and determined and with a look of pure murder in the set of her jaw -- are handing their effects to the third, a pretty enough girl if you like anime-style art pieces from literally any point in the last century who’s wilting under the weight of jewelry, bags, jackets.

The crowd around is wild; Mark can barely hear the commentator speaking. “It’s an excellent pairing. You never know who’s going to win something like this.” It’s all nonsense. Like there isn’t about to be blood shed in the parking lot. “Oh, she takes a swing…”

The smaller of the fighting females swings first. Then it’s a blur of limbs that Mark doesn’t even bother to keep track of. “Who films shit like this?” Jaehyun asks quietly, shaking his head at the state of the world. Weird. He’d usually be into a little girlfight. Maybe being brave has somehow made him more mature? Mark doesn’t really know how that works.

“Apparently the gremlins who film everything weird that happens at our store.” He knows, actually, exactly who would film shit like that, but keeps mum, inner bottom lip caught between his teeth in case it decides to leak important and secret information, as it is so wont to do. “It’s just...noisy.”

He’s about to turn off the live feed when a grey-uniformed, dark-haired someone wanders onto the scene, and Mark’s heart skips a beat.

Taeyong.

Privately, Mark hopes Taeyong isn’t foolhardy enough to try and get in the middle of a girlfight. Mark has seen some girlfights. They’re dangerous. Way worse than douchejocks. The noise of distress that he makes is enough to get Jaehyun, who’s halfway through a second slice of pizza, to look back at the screen.

“Ohp, there’s your man.” He’s grinning again, that mischief in his eyes, the sort that Mark has, over the years, basically come to both admire and dread. “You text him back about the song yet?”

“Not yet.” Mark tips his head. “Is now a good time?”

“Maybe you’ll stop him from getting in his head too hard about it.” The evil never fades from Jaehyun’s sidelong glances. “You know how he gets when things at work are...wild.”

And yes, Mark does know. The last time things got wild, Taeyong had been forced to tackle a grown man twice his height stealing two from a twelve-pack of Natty Light. He had sat in Taeil’s office for three hours just staring at the wall and not saying much of anything to anyone. Apparently the guy had caught him in the throat with an elbow trying to get away and Taeyong saw his whole life flash before his eyes.

He does message Taeyong, and it’s nothing, throwaway at best, congratulations on a job well-done, but it lets Taeyong know he’s there, if Taeyong needs him to be there. He knows how important it is to be reminded that there are things in the world that don’t involve retail hell, and knows that Taeyong’s experience is uniquely harrowing.

He wonders, just for a moment, who does that for him.

And then his phone goes off again.

He frowns at the name on the screen, the downturn of his lips deepening as he reads the message attached to the name, and doesn’t answer, figures he’ll give it until tonight when he goes in for his graveyard. Not like the message matters much. Just an invitation to some party. Not answering is what he owes to himself, since apparently _no one_ wants to do that for him -- give him a few solid minutes of peace of mind without worrying about a past that probably shouldn’t haunt him but does anyway.

He plucks up another slice of pizza, and drapes his legs comfortably over Jaehyun’s lap, and doesn’t move again until he has to get ready for work. Not even when Jaehyun has to pee.


	3. asleep in the fan aisle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ten gets acquainted with some display furniture. johnny really, really, really likes fans. mark makes a rescue, kinda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> goooooooood evening everyone  
> i'm two days late on my self-imposed update schedule because i was on vacation  
> we love vacation around here can mark maybe get a vacation? it's what he deserves
> 
> just so y'all know there is some drunkenness in public that starts at the scene break, and some vomiting in case you're sensitive to that? it starts at "And fuck, Mark feels bad" the first time and is mentioned briefly a second time  
> thanks please take care of yourself

It’s midnight, well before the witching hour, but Ten has magic on the mind regardless. Hilarious how that works out -- he moves in with a sort-of Wiccan and ends up morbidly fascinated by the help the occult brings. 

Not that it’s helping. Not tonight, anyway.

Ten can’t sleep. In fact, he’s been tossing and turning for so long that he’s sure he hasn’t even blinked in at least the past three days. He tried asking Doyoung about it, but Doyoung wasn’t around, and didn’t answer the 1,001 texts Ten sent him, and so he has resorted to other methods of coping.

None of them are particularly good or helpful. Some of them involve trying to figure out which ritual sacrifice will help him get some rest already. He’s too rich and too beautiful to look this worn-out. Google says that he just needs a good cup of tea, but again, Doyoung has some sort of weird aversion to answering texts tonight. Which is fine. It’s valid. Ten can’t complain. He’s all too aware that he’s the sort of person certain types just need a break from. He’s quietly grateful that he doesn’t have to endure any more of Doyoung’s sleeplessness-induced grumbliness. 

Still. It’s midnight, well before the witching hour, and Ten has some time to kill, and some projects to work on, and he doesn’t even know that he’s going to end up trying any kind of witchcraft tonight, anyway.

The obvious answer would be to try again to sleep. He does not. He is intimately familiar with every popcorn dot on his ceiling.

Instead he takes an Uber to the superstore down the way. He’s so tired he nearly forgets why he’s there when he arrives. But then that weird security dude with the dead eyes waves at him and Ten _remembers_.

Johnny must move around pretty quickly (Ten considers his long legs, then immediately unconsiders, all too afraid of the implications there, what would run away with him and what wouldn’t), because it takes Ten the better part of an hour to actually get him someplace where he can hover within ten feet. He knows the rules; he’s been shopping at places like this for most of his adult life, much to his parents’ dismay, and though he’s never taken out a literal tape measure, he’s an artist, good at guesstimating distances and very little else.

They’re standing in electronics, within that safe distance, zoned, staring up at their own individual sixty-inch flat screen TV displays. Johnny is the first one to turn his head. “Can I help you with,” he starts, but trails off when he catches sight of Ten in profile, illuminated by flashes of neon and neutral by turns. “Oh. Hey.” He blinks a couple times, clearly internalising the situation. “Are...you okay?”

Ten just sort of shakes his head, never once looking away from the television screen, not even as it shows him an image of a high-definition football game. “I’m really tired and I sort of needed to get something and I can’t remember what it is because I’ve been wandering around looking for you.” He turns his head, and he knows Johnny can see the exhaustion written plain over his face, but he doesn’t have the shame in him to hide it. That left maybe three days ago. “You didn’t call me after you left Saturday morning.”

“Was I supposed to?” Johnny’s got that furrow to his brow, the one that only shows on the right side. It’s cute. He’s so fucking cute. “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, I told you to let me know you got home safe.” Ten doesn’t bother hiding his miffedness any more than he does his face. “And like, yeah, you aren’t obligated to do anything for me. It’s fine. But I was kinda worried you had a bad time or something.”

“A bad--” He takes a step closer, reaches out, realising too late that he isn’t close enough to touch and hand dangling limply at his side. “I wouldn’t have stayed over if it was a bad time.” 

Ten catches a hint of Johnny’s smell, and it’s near enough to knock him to the ground. But he’s always been good about standing strong on his own two feet, even when assaulted by memories of an enormous and snuggly man wrapped around him. “Yeah, but,” and there’s something nagging at him, asking for Ten’s attention, tickling at his sides but mentally, “sometimes I think I’m a bad time.” He raises his eyebrows, an anxiety he rarely experiences tugging at his guts.

Johnny takes the hint. “I told you twice, I’m not angry that you didn’t want to--” he glances around for anyone who might be listening in on their conversation, “...you know, have sex.”

Ten shrugs. He’s filling up now, nostalgia for their one night together taking the place of the emotion that should probably be in this moment, this space, Johnny being as tender and careful with him as any boy next door might be. “Yeah, but you didn’t call, so.” He doesn’t like being handled like he’s something fragile, would ghost at the chance if it were most other people, but Johnny doesn’t seem to know that he’s even doing it.

Johnny’s bottom lip sticks out, and he blows a tendril of hair out of his face. “My bad.” His walkie-talkie sounds in his back pocket; his expression turns apologetic. “Hold on. Stay here. Don’t go anywhere.” He’s holding up a hand as he reaches for it with the other, slowly backing away, like Ten is some kind of feral animal that’ll attack if he moves too fast. That’s fair. Ten probably is exactly that at this point. 

There’s a couch across from the TV displays, and Ten flops on it as soon as Johnny’s out of sight, staring into the movement of the television until it lulls him into a light sleep. 

When he sleeps, his dreams are filled with a long night of talking about the world, about art, about Johnny’s job and his fears of the future, about Ten’s family. There’s no sleeping on his part, but instead the hours are spent watching the faint shades of molten gold fill his room as the sun crests the city skyline, framing a snoozing Johnny in their glow. Ten hasn’t seen anyone so peaceful in a long time. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt that peaceful himself, but anything for art, right? Suffering is what makes him.

It isn’t satisfying, especially when someone meanders up to him and tells him that ‘sir, this is a _display_ couch, you can’t sleep here’. Ten wakes with a start, the voice interrupting the part of his dream that is fantasy, the idea that he could ever be so bold as to wake his sleeping beauty with a kiss. He blinks the dust from his eyes quickly and stares up to see…

“Oh, hey.” It’s Mark. That’s his name, right? Ten is maybe ten percent person on a good day, and half-asleep he’s even worse. “You’re the one I’m always lying about. Hi.”

A shadow crosses Mark’s face. “That is so nice to hear.” He clears his throat. “Was Johnny just here? There’s a situation up front and we called for him, but he isn’t answering.”

“He was when I fell asleep, but,” and here Ten forces himself to look regretful even though however long he’s been out is the longest he’s slept in forever and he doesn’t regret that in the slightest, “I have no idea how long I’ve been here.”

Mark softens, if such a thing is even possible -- he’s naturally so soft, Ten notes, a piece to be started and never completed at a later date forming itself in the shadows of sleep still lingering in his half-dead brain -- and shrugs. “If you can sleep on that lumpy ass couch you can stay,” he says with a shrug. “I gotta go find him. You okay?”

“M’fine,” and Ten is sleepy again already just at the suggestion, tucking his head under his arm to block out the lights overhead, though a piece of him is unendingly grateful for the mercy Mark seems to want to afford him. “Find him quick, he told me to...stay here? I think.”

He might nod his understanding. He might not. Ten is too far gone to care.

When he wakes again, several hours and a dozen and a half different sleeping positions later, it’s to the sound of his phone ringing. Like, an actual phone call. It’s an irritating noise. He grumbles loudly and digs it out of his clutch and stares into the screen, answers it, nearly drops it on the ugly time-stained linoleum.

“Hey,” he says, so fondly that it makes the rest of him curl up, small and round and vulnerable. A croissant of a man. His spine cracks in protest.

“Sorry for not calling sooner.” Johnny’s voice is all static. “You still back there?”

“Yeah,” Ten says with a yawn that he just barely manages to stifle. “What time is it?”

“About three. Were you asleep on that terrible couch?”

“Yeah.” He pauses. “I know you’re busy. Maybe I’ll just stay here until you get off.” It is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the least Ten-like thing he’s ever said, or done for that matter; his back is crying for his four-poster California king that barely fits in his bedroom, but he really wants to see Johnny. He’s convinced Johnny’s some kind of lucky charm -- not that things are impossible without him, but that everything happens better when he’s around.

Johnny is just quiet. “Do you need anything? There are more comfortable couches in the furniture section. Or there’s a trampoline display in toys.”

“Don’t wanna move.” And that, at least, is a little more Ten-like. “Come get me when your shift is over.”

* * *

It starts as it usually does: at midnight, with a fuckstick beanpole of a dude wandering into the superstore midst. He doesn’t see Mark working the register, but that’s because he couldn’t pay enough attention if he were paid to. He’s the kind of person that looks like they don’t belong here by sheer wardrobe alone, and Mark is disgusted by the sight of him.

Even more so that his heart skips a beat, but whatever. No one’s here to keep stock of that but he, himself, and him.

Still, his face must do something when he sees that faintly-blond, well-coiffed head bob over the long strip of As Seen On TV merchandise and disappear into the depths of the store, because Taeyong, having been sitting at the front near the security gates flipping through a textbook and pretending to be intimidating, approaches his register from behind, slipping dangerously close to inside the tiny cubicle in which Mark is supposed to stand. “Hey,” he says, and he’s softer, more tired than usual -- everyone’s more tired than usual, it’s midnight, but whatever -- and Mark swallows thick, catching a hint of his shampoo on the wind of his movement. “You okay? You know him?”

Mark shrugs. “He’s my friend, sometimes,” he admits freely, willing his heart to calm down so he doesn’t trip over his words. “He, um. He’s. He’s a lot.” It’s funny, that he turns into this fucking idiot when Taeyong’s around, but with everyone else he’s cool. Well. Cool is relative. He’s overthinking it. “Lucas, I mean. I love him a lot, but...he pretends not to, uh, know how to act a lot of the time.”

Taeyong looks Mark over once, twice, and nods, throat bobbing with the movement. Mark does his best not to note it too intensely. “If he messes with you--”

“He will. It’s what he does.”

Taeyong grimaces, sympathetically, and Mark likes him a little more for it, if such a thing is possible. “When he messes with you, just give me the look, okay?” He offers his hand for a decidedly platonic low-five, the sliding kind, and Mark gives it to him, of course. “Seriously. I know I’m usually busy having an out of body experience, but...I’m here for you.”

Mark, in a flash of inspiration, changes the subject. “Hey, I really loved that song you sent me.”

Taeyong colours faintly. “Yeah?” he asks, nervousness in the way he gently shuffles, as if he isn’t used to people commenting on it. Mark doesn’t think he is. It’s endearing.

“Yeah. I’ve been listening to it every day.”

“And here I thought that was one of my rabid fangirls.” Taeyong flashes that awkward smile of his, the one Jaehyun often suggests was inherited from his alien predecessors, and Mark’s heart does a weird thing in his throat, which makes him cough, both hands flying up too late to cover his mouth entirely. “...You okay?” The smile becomes a laugh, far less otherworldly, and Mark is able to breathe again.

“Yup. Wrong pipe.” He tries to smile himself, albeit a little weakly. “Seriously. I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’ve known Lucas forever. I know what kind of stupid shit he’s capable of doing.” He hesitates. “But thank you for, um, for looking after me.”

Taeyong pats Mark on the shoulder, and fuck, it’s platonic, but it’s the most intimate thing Taeyong’s ever given him face-to-face, the thing closest to his own heart, and Mark knows himself well enough to know that he’s going to be thinking of it for at least the next hour.

Just as quickly as he’d come Taeyong is gone, and Mark is left to mind his empty checkout line. He checks his phone a couple times, not breaking the rules so much as keeping track of the time. It takes maybe twenty minutes before he realises that Lucas has never taken this long at this game they play once or twice a week, and that he should probably be concerned. 

Actually, upon a little bit more reflection, he _is_ concerned.

He flips off the light over his checkstand, and wanders out, not sure where to start looking, but he’s got a half-decent idea of where to start. He wanders over to Family Planning, but no, none of the boxes of condom or bottles of lube have been disturbed, as far as he can tell. That’s good, Mark thinks with a hint of despair. Lucas has been getting predictable in his half of their ritual, namely picking weirder and weirder things he implies are going inside him later in the evening.

From the pharmacy section he searches in a circuitous direction. Next is personal care. No shaving cream bombs, no messes for anyone to clean. He’s quietly grateful for that. He’d be the one who’d have to drag out the mop and bucket, after all, and he isn’t entirely sure how well kitty litter would absorb shampoo. After that is pet care, and he doesn’t even know what kind of mischief could be made there at first, but then he remembers the live fish, and shudders, drawing in on himself as he walks. After that is pool care, home repair and hardware, sporting goods…

He finds Lucas in the toy section. He should’ve known. 

Actually, there’s no plausible way to have predicted this, because it happens in slow motion. Lucas is riding a tiny bike, probably one of the ones for kindergartners, but without training wheels. He’s got a lollipop stick hanging out of his mouth, and there’s a trail of lollipops marking the path he’s taken from where the bike racks are to where he is now, at the border between toys and automotive. Where did he get the lollipops? Are they stolen? A gentle panic rises in Mark’s chest. He really doesn’t know how to process this, let alone tell his manager about it.

Lucas slams on the brakes of his bike as soon as he spots Mark. This is a mistake, because the endcap is that elastic jungle gym that holds in all manner of bouncy balls, and Lucas wobbles drunkenly over his handlebars and knocks into it, freeing the balls from their prison.

“FUCK,” Lucas and Mark yell in discordant unison, Lucas’ bike slipping out from beneath him, his unsteady balance and enormity in comparison to his Sweet Ride leaving him sprawled out on the concrete floor. Mark jogs the distance between them, pops a squat right there and takes Lucas’ face in his hands.

“Mark,” Lucas breathes with his trademark too-big smile. “I’m going to a ball! They’re going to name a queen...after...after me?” Confusion knots his brow. “That isn’t how it goes, is it.”

“Nope,” Mark agrees. “Are you drunk?”

“ _NO_ ,” insists Lucas, scrambling to sit instead of lay, and God, he looks so childish. So small. Even with those stupidly big hands of his cradling his face, index fingers pointing at his liquor-red ears. “Maybe. I had, like, two drinks.”

“Yeah, but what were they,” mumbles Mark, taking Lucas by his stupid wrists and standing, pulling up to his stupid feet. Lucas just giggles, and doesn’t do much in the way of following along with the whole ‘get drunk Lucas the fuck out of the store’ plan, but at the very least he’s had enough that he’s kinda loosey-goosey. “C’mon. Take me to the queen. I wanna see this coronation.” He feels vaguely guilty, having abandoned his duty at the front end, but he _super_ hates front end, as does anyone with a heart and soul. 

Lucas, having forgotten his size and relative strength, takes Mark by the elbow and drags him along, completely ignoring the balls littering the floor and kicking a few out of his way in the process. Mark might feel bad about that, too, if he were someone who ever got to work in the toy department. He’d ask someone to come clean up the mess in a minute. He just needs to know Lucas’ idea of a queen in this nightmare of a building at 12:37am. 

“Hey, so, you missed that party I invited you to,” Lucas is blathering, leading them past automotive, and craft, and photo lab, into electronics. He’s fascinated by the televisions, their bright movement and loud noise drawing Lucas, the shiny thing to his sideways-flying magpie. “It was great. You know someone invited all of--” He spies someone sleeping on the couch -- _that’s Ten,_ thinks Mark, shrinking back away from the image of him, even as he’s tiny, even as he’s asleep, little snores slipping from his mouth every third breath or so. “That’s the queen,” Lucas states plainly, making a gesture of reverence and respect in Ten’s general direction.

“M’a queen,” murmurs Ten in what must be an out-of-body experience for him.

“Look how _beautiful_ ,” Lucas whispers in awe, tearing up a little. Mark sighs, and fits his arms around Lucas’ arm, and pulls him along, out of electronics, directly into the discount bin of DVDs, which shudders mightily beneath their combined impact and just. Fucking collapses.

“Oops.” Lucas blinks down at it, and Mark swears he sees his whole job flushing down the toilet, but Lucas just waltzes away, past baby clothes, through the center aisle between menswear and women’s clothing.

Lucas, it seems, has other plans. “How come you don’t hang out anymore, man?” he asks as he redirects them toward frozen foods, suddenly a bit sullen, head dipping in that way Mark knows means he’s really in his feelings about it. Great. Wonderful. Lucas, drunk and in his feelings, is like a bad ballad marathon waiting to happen. “I miss you.” Mark does _not_ want to have a heartfelt conversation surrounded by waffles. In fact, he can think of several things that he only does a couple times a month around the store that he’d rather be doing. Hell, he’d rather be anywhere else on the planet.

He wonders where Taeyong is, but it’s a lightning flash of an idea, really. He can’t exactly whip out his walkie-talkie and call for security. Lucas will just bolt, and probably hide in ladies’ intimates, and then it’ll be a whole wild goose chase from there.

“Because we broke up,” Mark states, as if commenting on the state of the weather, not that he ever _knows_ the state of the weather because he’s always trapped in someone else’s hell. “If one of your exes was always inviting you to stuff, what would you do?” They’re rounding the aisles in a zigzag, Mark pulled along all too easily. He could just disengage, but Lucas is here to see him, right? Drunk or not, he feels responsible for the mess left behind in their wake. He didn’t _find_ any other messes with Lucas’ name on them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

“Yeah, we broke up,” Lucas is saying, like it doesn’t _mean_ anything to him, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t hang out? We were friends first?” And he sits down right there, among the coffees and shelf-stable creamers, looking up at Mark with his huge eyes, tinted red, slightly watery.

And fuck, Mark feels bad. Just a little bad.

Then Lucas is leaning over with that “Mr. Mark I don’t feel so good” look on his face and vomits a puddle way bigger that can account for the size of any human stomach, all over the pristine, just-cleaned floor of the frozen breakfast aisle.

The worst part is, he doesn’t even have it in him to look ashamed. Drunk Lucas isn’t really a sight to behold for anyone, and Mark thinks that if it were him he’d at least try to hide. 

Lucas, however, just pops back up like nothing ever happened, gently backs Mark against the cooler of frozen paleo-friendly morning meals. “Just, like, do you even like me anymore?”

 _No,_ thinks Mark, defeated. 

Of course, Lucas looks stricken, takes a half-step back, slipping in his own vomit and crashing to the floor a second time. Of course, because Mark had said that out loud, like he always does when some embarrassingly honest thought crosses his mind. And of course, not for the first time, Mark has the distinct sensation of being watched.

He’ll have to convince Lucas not to sue, later. His parents would fucking _love_ that, snatching a store out from under the poor bastards who have to work there. Mark is overwhelmed by the smell of stomach acid and vodka and not a whole hell of a lot else, and would like very, very much to leave.

Still, he feels bad. Or maybe that’s residual guilt from the moment _before_ Lucas had barfed on him -- or, if he’s honest in going further back, the moment at which he’d decided he’d rather work than spend time with someone who’s still his friend after all he’s done, all the sacrifices he’s needed to make to have even some semblance of comfort.

Somewhere in the back of his mind echoes a familiar voice, one he doesn’t hear narrating his own business very often. He tips his head to the ceiling, standing over his still-drunk ex-boyfriend, and thinks about how capitalism never sleeps, because it has workers to do that for it, or some other propaganda Yuta had told him when they’d first started working together. 

“Are you okay?” he asks Lucas, who is still crumpled and hasn’t moved in a disconcerting few minutes. Lucas makes a noise that, in Mark’s estimation, doesn’t _sound_ like disagreement, and Mark takes that as good enough. 

He seeks out Johnny first. Well, okay, no, he goes back to the couch where they’d found Ten first, and asks him if he’s seen Johnny. He hasn’t, and Mark takes pity on him, lets him go back to sleep. It’s weird; usually Ten looks like some kind of weird predatory bird, but asleep he just reminds Mark of the kitten videos he tends to watch on Instagram when he’s down.

Cute. He understands why Johnny looks so lost on the nights when Ten doesn’t come in. Maybe he even felt that way about Lucas, once.

He checks home improvement next. Weirdly, Johnny is there. Good for Mark, remembering things about people he works with -- namely, that Johnny has a weird preoccupation with the sound fans make when they all run at the same time. The aisle itself is a weird approximation of a wind tunnel, frost-cold, and Johnny’s got his face to the strongest one.

“Do you, uh, need a minute?” he asks from one end of the aisle, Johnny standing at the other, but it’s fucking impossible to be heard here. He sidles closer, but apparently it’s too close because Johnny just raises his head and stares at Mark with that dead look usually given by customers who are having emergencies at 4 in the morning.

“What’s up,” Johnny asks flatly. “Did you page me? Sorry, I--”

“S’cool. I have the dairy cooler, you have the fan aisle.” 

Johnny smiles, and it’s even scarier when he’s like this, eyes watering from the wind attack he’d purposely endured. He reaches out and claps Mark on the shoulder, and together they leave that aisle for the next one, two lanes down, far enough that they can converse, not that Johnny seems to want to do much of the talking here, too blissed out by white noise. 

“So, um, there’s a situation. I kinda have to go?” Mark hopes he looks as apologetic as he feels. “Also there’s bouncy balls all over the toy section, a bike somewhere in there that needs to be put back, uh…” He’s counting off on his fingers, hoping he’s kept track of his messes well enough, since he’s not the sorry fool who has to clean them up. “The DVD bucket collapsed again, same as last time, do we need to tell region that we need a new bucket? Something to fix his old bucket with? And, uh, there’s...um...puke--” he whispers the word, as if that’s somehow _offensive_ to any human being with a stomach, “in the coffee aisle. I think it’s the coffee aisle?”

Johnny takes all this in with a blank stare. But then he nods. “Are you okay?”

Oh, fuck, Johnny thinks _Mark_ is the one who did all that. Does he look feverish, at least? He’d normally kill for a day off, right, because they’re so few and far between that they feel like miracles hand-delivered from a God he doesn’t always believe in, but he isn’t _sick_ and he shouldn’t have to go home.

Still, it’s him or Lucas getting a ban from seeing him when he works graveyard. Mark isn’t sure he can live with that on his conscience.

He nods. “Yeah, I’m just...gonna go home.”

“Cool.” Johnny shrugs.

“Thanks, man. I owe you major.” He shuffles awkwardly from foot to foot. “Oh, hey, that guy? Ten? He’s asleep on the couch in electronics. I think he’s waiting for you.”

Johnny’s bliss disappears so quickly Mark swears he can see a cartoon outline of what Johnny’s face looked like exactly two seconds before Mark made the fool decision to open his mouth. “Yeah, thanks.” Johnny runs his hand through his hair. “Just...go home, okay?”

“Yeah...call you tomorrow…” If Mark is nervous, and he sure as hell won’t admit to it, he’s not showing it, not even as he tries really hard not to run out of the aisle, get Lucas out of the store, and get gone. 

He does run, when he thinks Johnny’s out of earshot, and his shoes squeak on the recently-polished floor when he skids around corners.

Lucas is still where Mark left him, much to Mark’s great relief. He takes Lucas by the hands, pulls him up to his feet. “I’m gonna take you home,” he says in a rush, “but we gotta go now, before they figure out something’s up.”

Dazed, Lucas just sort of nods and goes where he’s bid, winding out of grocery, toward the front end.

Mark almost stops dead in his tracks when he realises Taeyong is still right there, sitting by that same security gate, flipping through that same textbook with the same bored expression on his face. What Mark wouldn’t give to see a hint of light in his eyes, but now’s not the time, not when Lucas is definitely a two-vom minimum kind of dude and it’s easier for Mark to clean his car than clean the store in that state. He takes a breath, chest puffed, and marches right on by.

“Stop.”

Mark has seen Taeyong tackle people for not listening. It’s part of his domain or whatever. He’s also seen the way it looks on Taeyong after the fact, and wouldn’t wish that on a single living human.

Taeyong’s got that intense security man stare as he looks Mark and Lucas, collectively, up and down. “Are you taking him home?” he asks Mark, not bothering to address Lucas, not that he’d be much of a conversationalist, anyway. Mark nods, tongue darting out over his bottom lip like an exceptionally anxious iguana. “Does Johnny know you’re leaving?” Mark nods again. “Okay. You two be safe, alright?” And yes, he’s definitely _talking_ to Mark, but the intensity of his gaze only deepens as he stares into Lucas’ face, probably noting the gentle and, horrifyingly enough, _dry_ trail of vom remains at the corner of Lucas’ mouth.

“Thanks. I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow.” He waves awkwardly, and he and Lucas leave the store, bursting into the gentle warmth of the evening, the light pollution guiding their way through the endless succession of half-working security lights.

Lucas doesn’t even bother to act shy about anything anymore, and why should he, in front of his best friend? Soon as he’s comfortable in Mark’s passenger seat, he’s moaning broken Chinese. “Please do _not_ barf in my car,” Mark requests as he starts the engine, idling it for a moment or two, letting it warm up so they can cool off. Brisk air works for the regular drunks he’s used to picking up on Friday nights, it’ll be just fine for Lucas.

At the very least, Lucas is kind, and pushes the door all the way open when he leans outside to rid his stomach of whatever was left.

They drive in silence, the only interruption one of Lucas’ attempts to fuck with the radio. Mark is so proud that he’s got a car where everything is on Bluetooth and he doesn’t physically have to interfere. He bats Lucas’ enormous hand away anyway. Said enormous hand just sort of rests on Mark’s thigh, not trying to be seductive so much as needing something that isn’t currently in motion to hold on to.

Mark’s done this once, a dozen, a hundred times. The only weird thing about it is that it isn’t weird at all.

Lucas’ house is kind of far out, everything near Mark’s apartment too clustered together for the likes of Lucas’ family. He doesn’t mind the long drive, especially not when Lucas gives up half-aborted attempts at saying words that actually go together. He sort of misses the scenic route, Lucas’ long driveway, the smells of the city giving way to nature.

It’s only when he actually sees the gate, the golden lions cresting either side, that he realises why he feels so bad, and that it isn’t for Lucas, it’s for himself.


	4. let's get some ice cream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> partners only meetings are a nightmare. taeyong has a craving that johnny doesn't share. the dick is the powerhouse of the creative flow. yuta calls a council meeting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi hello happy saturday!! i don't think there's a lot to say here other than thank you to everyone who's had nice things to say about this so far, so, THANK YOU! ♥

PARTNERS ONLY meetings are very rarely fun for anyone involved. Especially Johnny. Taeil gets to swoop in, deliver bad news, and still be the good guy, go deal with other stuff for the rest of his shift, while Johnny has to make the same clarification twenty-seven times and get stared at like he’s made a personal deal with Satan just to _have_ the information, let alone _use_ it. It’s moments like these that he remembers just how resented he is for both being and not being someone in charge. Schrödinger’s upper management quandry or whatever the fuck he feels like calling it, whatever anyone on the outside looking in feels like calling it.

He’s tired. It’s hot in Taeil’s office, and the crowd of bodies into such a small space isn’t doing much to make it better. Jaehyun and Yuta are both collectively looking at one phone -- it doesn’t take Johnny three guesses to figure out the video they’re watching on Instagram, but he’ll pretend he needs them anyway -- and giggling in spurts. Johnny definitely does not partake in violence, because his hands are too big and he doesn’t know his own strength sometimes (his previous sexual partners would probably agree, not that he can call any of them and ask), but something about it makes him want to go over and slap the both of them upside the head.

It’s the heat. He’ll tell himself that until the air conditioning gets fixed.

Taeil’s late, probably hiding in home and garden after dealing with district management like he usually does. Johnny isn’t sure what he expected, besides being annoyed. He knows that he’s probably in trouble for not watching over everyone at the same time, or controlling the free will of a paying customer, or some other outrageous expectation that no one person could fulfil. Then again, that’s the name of the game. The thought makes him slide down in his chair, he feeling too long for this world -- or at least this office -- and he only perks up when he hears the telltale sound of the door opening and closing somewhere behind him.

At least now they can get it over with, he thinks, sitting up straight in his chair, knees tucked together and hands in his lap like the kissass everyone says he is when they think he isn’t listening.

Taeil looks impossibly tall from the front of the room, even standing behind his desk which effectively chops him in half from a visual perspective. Must be that sweet but cursed store manager vest. “We have a problem, PARTNERS,” he says when they’ve all fixed him with their impassive gazes. “Someone is making this store look very, very bad, and we’re all going to get fired if we don’t do something about it.” He’s already wilting underneath the oppressive touch of the heat filling the room, intensified by breath. “I really like this team, and I don’t want us all to get fired.”

Johnny just barely reins in a snort, knowing full well that Taeil only Really Likes this team as much as anyone Really Likes someone they’ve never spent time with -- in theory, and with a lot of imagination to fill in the gaps.

“So, as most of you know, there’s an Instagram account that showcases us at some of our less fine moments,” continues Taeil, bolstered by the fact that it seems everyone is somewhat listless. “Their most recent post shows a customer vomiting in the coffee aisle, and then slipping and falling in the, uh, mess.” He clears his throat. “That can’t keep happening. I need us to work together to sniff out whoever’s doing this, because their impact is ruining our performance against the other stores in the district. That means less perks for you.”

“Perks?” Yuta lifts his head from where he’d dipped, staring into the screen of his phone. Jaehyun’s phone. It doesn’t matter. “There are _perks_?”

“Less opportunities for promotion for everyone here, too. I know some of you want to move up to management, or at least a little bit better pay.” Yuta starts, but Jaehyun stops him with an arm on his elbow. “It also means that we’re going to have to put some measures into play.” Taeil does a wonderful job of ignoring the gentle murmurs of protest that rise up when everyone opens their collective mouth. “From now until we figure out what’s happening, on the clock means that you will not have your phones out.” Everyone groans collectively, Johnny included, because he likes to be a part of things. “Off the clock, you can do whatever you want. Off the clock meaning before your shift, after your shift, when you’re on break and when you take a lunch.” Taeil straightens his shoulders, tugs at the collar of his vest a little. For a half-second Johnny feels a pang of sympathy for him, as much as someone can feel sorry for their probable and sickening future. “Hopefully this also gets everyone back into the habit of clocking out before their break, and clocking back in after, and keeping everyone timely.” 

If Taeil shoots a pointed look in the direction of anyone, especially Yuta and Jaehyun, it goes unnoticed by the general populace. “Anyway, if anyone knows anything about this entire…” He searches for the word, hand swirling nonsensically in the air as if he’s going to pluck it from nowhere. “Fiasco,” he finally finishes, “please feel free to tell me. Or Johnny. Or anyone that isn’t a regular floor associate.” The translation: _someone that can get someone in trouble_.

Johnny kind of wants to watch the video again. He’s not much of a detective, but he’s somehow convinced he’s got the clues right in front of him and just can’t figure it out. “Do we have any questions?”

Everyone mumbles dissent for the new rule and starts filing out of the room before Taeil can dismiss them, which is fine. Johnny hadn’t realised it before but the sheer smell of _human_ in the office had been making him a bit queasy. He swallows around the nauseous spit in his throat, but he doesn’t move, sure Taeil’s got more to say to him.

“Hey,” Taeil greets once the office is mostly empty, confirming Johnny’s suspicion. He sits on top of his own desk, cross-legged, hands tucked in the hole formed between his knees. “So, uh, I need you to do me a favour and _not_ let people sleep on the display furniture anymore.” He’s got his serious face on, and Johnny knows that face well enough to know that he isn’t in trouble per se, but a disappointed Taeil is like seven large, angry cats all waiting to consume your flesh. 

Fuck. Had he been in some other video? Surveillance, maybe? His memory flashes back to Ten, when he’d found him at six-fifteen in the morning, face creased with the lines of that poor excuse for a couch, the sleepy smile with which he’d been greeted, and he really wishes he could take it back. Except he wouldn’t, not even for the chance to get out of this. It’s just weird that people know Ten is around, and probably know that Johnny’s interested in him; the thought makes that other queasiness worse, even as the scent in the air slowly dissipates. 

“I didn’t really let him,” Johnny points out, bottom lip sticking out without his knowledge. “He just sort of did, and then he was already asleep, and--”

“He looked like a homeless man,” and Taeil already sounds forgiving, which makes everything a dozen times worse, “and I get it, it’s too cold out in the evening. People are going to want to hang out in here.” Taeil’s eyes narrow, just a fraction. “But we can’t let just one person do it.”

Johnny thinks for a second. “He isn’t homeless.” Taeil lifts his eyebrows in mild surprise, recognition seeming to gently tap him on the shoulder. “But even if he were, I didn’t let anything happen.” He feels like a brat, like the kids he’s in charge of managing on weeknights, like he’s on the verge of throwing a tantrum because he isn’t getting the schedule he wants. “I’m not in control of things.” And God, that’s never felt more true.

“Being in control of things and being responsible for things aren’t the same,” Taeil reminds him gently, and there’s that forgiveness again. “It took everyone quite a while to clean up that entire mess, when Mark got sick, didn’t it.”

“Yeah. Because it was after midnight. There was barely anyone here.” Johnny sniffs, unimpressed. “It still got done before the early-morning rush.”

“Why are you being so defensive?”

_Because I don’t want to be you,_ Johnny thinks bitterly. He coughs under his breath, his attempt at suppressing the urge to yell it. Taeil isn’t his father; Johnny knows he doesn’t get to pour all his disappointment onto his boss. “Because everyone is going to break that damn phone rule,” he says after far too long a pause. “And you know that. District knows that. We deal with teenagers and twentysomethings. This isn’t the way to make it stop.”

“I’m just trying to make it easier for you.” The words should be soothing, but Johnny just shivers beneath his skin, his bones trying to escape it so they won’t have to creak anymore under the weight of a hundred different people’s expectations.

“I know,” Johnny admits. “I just...this isn’t it. And I know it’s not your fault, and that a dozen different people up the chain have told you that this is how it has to be, but they’re doing it wrong.” He stands, stretches his arms over his head. “I have to go remind kids they can’t use their phone. Thanks, Taeil.”

Chenle and Jisung are clustered next to the water fountain chattering away in a language that seems to only belong to the two of them. They’re both holding their phones in their respective grips, and it looks like they might have some game going on. Johnny can’t help the little smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth, although he’s having issues telling whether they’re being so cute, so friendly that it brings him joy, or whether the bitterness he’d felt in Taeil’s office a moment ago makes him nostalgic for a time that had been as simple as playing a game on your phone with a friend.

He strides out into the front end, hands in his vest pockets, and surveys the scene, checking to make sure nothing catastrophic has happened in the three minutes between his managers-only meeting and making it out here. It doesn’t look that way. Someone taps on his shoulder. Johnny turns, and it’s Taeyong. “Hey,” he says, earnest, “you okay? You stayed back...are you in trouble?”

“Nah,” and it’s a lie, sort of, because he’s not in trouble with his boss, but he hates himself enough right now to feel like maybe he might be in it anyway. “He isn’t mad. Did the weird dad thing he does where he said it was okay if I fuck everything up and the store gets closed.”

Taeyong glances around nervously, then whispers, “ _Is_ the store gonna get closed?”

Johnny laughs and drags a hand through his hair. “Not likely.” He gestures to the limitless lines at the few checkstands they have open at the moment. “Not so long as a bunch of soccer moms and elderly people have me to harass anyway.” He softens, something in him, some unfelt tension, melting like ice in an oven. “Hey, are _you_ okay? You seem a little more, uh, skittish than usual.”

“Yeah, just, you know. Studying. Sleeping less. Good thing I’m on the night shift most of this week, I guess.”

“Right, but…” Taeyong’s always been like this, and by now Johnny knows better than to try and correct the behaviour. “I dunno. If you need anything, let me know. I’ll try and get you on a better schedule or whatever.”

Taeyong’s cheekbones colour, just a little. “I kinda wanted to ask you about getting some ice cream.”

Oh, fuck. The codeword? A year ago, after their five-minute relationship and not-so-messy breakup, they’d thought that having sex for stress relief was acceptable. It was then, and they’d come up with a secret code in case either of them kind of needed a break. Up until a couple months ago, they’d talked about fake ice cream dates, and then fifteen minutes later they’d be fucking like teenagers in the back of the craft stock room, where no one ever went. Now every time Johnny goes for a scoop of butter pecan it’s like Pavlov’s boner, rising to the occasion.

“I, uh. I sorta can’t.” Except Johnny’s thinking about how good it would be, how stressed he is thinking about a future he wants but apparently isn’t allowed to have. “I’m seeing someone, I think.” The words are out of his mouth before the rest of him can stop it from happening. “Sorry, dude.”

Taeyong nods seriously, and the flush in his cheeks intensifies. He hooks his thumbs in the belt loops of his stupid store security uniform, looking unreasonably sexy, all things considered. “Yeah, no, it’s no big deal. Just. You looked like you needed it.”

“I do. I just can’t.” Taeyong looks so awkward it’s making _Johnny_ want to crawl into a hole, on his behalf. “Hey, seriously, if you need anything-- well, anything besides that.” And he tries to imagine Taeyong where he was, before the two of them met, a string of one-night stands and two-week relationships, all of which Johnny had been convinced were The One. It was when he’d decided to change all that, that he’d gotten this job, actually. Promoted pretty quickly. He regrets a lot of things he’s done over the past couple years. Meeting Taeyong just isn’t one of them.

“Yeah, no, I’m cool. I can always just hook up with my neighbour or something.” Taeyong flashes that weird smile of his. Johnny is still sometimes convinced that Taeyong had been cloned from some horrifyingly charismatic dude no one had ever heard of and learned to smile by watching reality TV. “Don’t worry about me.” He hesitates, and Johnny knows what’s coming by the weird and too-old knit of Taeyong’s brow. “Is it the sofa guy?”

“It might be the sofa guy,” Johnny sighs, exaggerated, covering his face in his hands and peering out from between parted fingers.

Taeyong laughs. “Ten, right? He’s okay. I’ve talked with him a few times.”

“Lucky you only got off with a few,” Johnny grumbles good-naturedly. “No, really...he’s interesting. Real. You ever get the sense nothing in this fucking store is real?”

“All the time. It’s how I come up with some of the music I do.”

“Nothing like retail hell to get the creative juices flowing.”

By now Johnny is a lot happier than he had been leaving Taeil’s office, and Taeyong’s stopped blushing, and it’s easy to forget that Taeyong had asked Johnny for a dick appointment. Thank God. “I’m gonna get back to work,” Taeyong says, gesturing vaguely to the store at large. “But seriously. If you just need to talk about stuff with someone who can string two sentences together, I’m your man.” He wanders off, probably to do floor patrol, look out for six-year-olds snatching AirHeads, and Johnny just sort of watches him go.

He thinks about texting Ten, but resists, all too aware of how many eyes are on him, and how many of that many are expecting him to set a good example. Still, he earmarks it for later, knowing that he has a lot to think about, and far more to do.

* * *

Later that night, Taeyong is home alone. Well, alone is relative. He’s surrounded by fur babies at this exact moment, curled up on his couch, his laptop over his thighs as he tinkers with the levels on a track he’s been working on for a month. 

It isn’t coming out right. He can’t really explain Why it isn’t coming out right, because he’s tooled around with it for so long that he doesn’t remember his original intention, so for all intents and purposes it Should be coming out however it’s meant to come out. It’s done in that it’s written. It just doesn’t sound the way he wants to. He flounders for an explanation as to why as his kids come up to him, surrounding him, a flock of vultures waiting for a carcass upon which to feed.

Kidding. He knows why. It’s because, in his somewhat educated estimation, the dick is the powerhouse of the creative flow, and because no one has so much as looked at his dick in at least three months. Not that he can’t get that to happen, right. He’s Taeyong, and he knows he’s cute enough to go down to some club and find someone to hook up with, if that’s what gets to him. It just isn’t anymore. Not for awhile now.

He can feel eight pairs of eyes staring at him, waiting for attention and, more importantly, food. Sighing, heavy with the burden of creative genius and the knowledge that he simply won’t have time to work on this for the next couple days, he sets down his computer and drags himself to his feet, busying himself with filling four bowls for four excited kids.

When it’s all over, and he’s clicking through Netflix, trying to find something that might even vaguely inspire him, his legs kicked up on the back of the couch, Ruby jumps up there with him, curling into a tiny Ruby-sized ball under the backs of his thighs and warming him with love. He coos at her, reaching over himself to scratch her ears affectionately. He can feel the cats’ indignation from here, even when they’re occupied with fighting over who’s allowed to eat the most food, but he ignores it in favour of giving attention to his favourite girl. 

She makes a soft sound and drags a kiss across his palm, and he giggles. He loves nights off to spend time with his kids. Weird juxtaposition of thoughts, he knows that all too well, but when he’s trying to get something done he ends up flightier than he’d like.

He loves them markedly less when his next door neighbour slams in, and music fills both their apartments, courtesy of the paper-thin walls between them. He isn’t even sure Sicheng _knows_ how thin the walls are; it isn’t like Taeyong brings people home often, nor like Sicheng complains about the few times Ruby gets to feeling unruly. Still, it’s a little bit headache-inducing, and that combined with the rejection from earlier (it’d been a favour, yeah, because Johnny always looks seconds away from snapping necks these days, but Taeyong had been hoping to do himself a favour, too) has the hair on the back of his neck standing up. 

He keeps thinking about that song, fully written and a third composed, and that sort of insanity doesn’t lead to much good. At least, not in his experience. So he gently nudges Ruby from beneath him so as to not crush her with his legs, and climbs from his spot on the couch. Netflix calls out to him in the peripheral as he exits his apartment, only barely remembering to put on real shoes instead of house shoes. 

He glances down at himself, and yeah, he’s wearing sweats and a t-shirt, and he knows his hair is kind of messy, but he knows himself well enough to know he looks okay. Not that it helps. He rings Sicheng’s doorbell, and after a couple moments’ awkward shuffling Sicheng answers the door with his hair slicked back, still smelling vaguely of whatever the hell it is models wear when they’re on set. It’s good. Intoxicating, even. 

All at once, Taeyong is reminded of his inadequacy, of the fact that he is in fact a mess of a human being, and that he is constantly surrounded by people who are mainly perfection in human form. 

Sicheng just looks confused. “Hey,” he greets, “were we doing a thing tonight?”

“I mean, I have food,” Taeyong murmurs, tipping his head and leaning against the doorframe like some vampire waiting to be invited in. “You know you can always come over and eat. I made enough for both of us. No, uh, I just, y’know, was working on something and heard your music in my living room--”

Sicheng colours all the way down his throat, and maybe it’s just the recent sex drought but Taeyong can’t actually convince himself it isn’t pretty, alluring, just a little bit. “I’m so sorry,” he says quietly, and his accent is so charming, and everything about him is drawing Taeyong in. Maybe Sicheng is the vampire, he thinks despondently, in need of some equally handsome prey. He looks well-suited for the part today, anyway. “I’ll turn it down, I’m sorry, how is work going?”

Sicheng, blessedly, knows very little about Taeyong’s day job. Taeyong is privately afraid that he’ll have the same reaction as everyone else -- that the uniform is hot, and that Taeyong himself is very, very hopeless when it comes to security work. “It’s fine,” he answers, putting on a placating smile. “Seriously, have you eaten? How’s _your_ work?” He already knows the answer to both these questions, and is leading away so that Sicheng will follow. 

“I think I’m going to get a contract soon,” Sicheng intones carefully, always so cautious with his words. Taeyong smiles fondly as he leaves his own door open, toes out of his shoes and back into his slippers. “They always say such good things about me, and I’m really hopeful.”

“That’s good.” He hears the door click shut behind him, and suddenly the knowledge that he and his super hot, soon-to-be supermodel neighbour and he are closed in together washes over him. “I’m really proud of you, you know?” He makes his way into the kitchen, dragging out the pre-portioned leftovers he’d made himself for lunches at work, and leaves a few on the counter for Sicheng to pick through -- whatever Sicheng wants, he can have, as far as Taeyong is concerned. “I remember when you first moved in here, and you had that sugar daddy--” Sicheng fixes him with indignance, but Taeyong continues on, hopping onto the tiny countertop with just one hand for balance, “and you didn’t know whether or not he’d want to pay your rent, and now look at you. A strong, independent sugar baby. Be your own daddy. Schedule your own dick appointments. All that.”

Sicheng chokes on a mouthful of rice, and Taeyong plops down from his spot to beat his friend on the back so no one has to call the police today. Sicheng, being Sicheng, bats him away, but comes to his senses nonetheless, eyes watering and distress clear in the set of his mouth, the grain of rice stuck to the corner of his mouth. “I haven’t had a dick appointment in ages,” Sicheng intones fondly, albeit in a somewhat throaty voice, his vocal cords raw with the trauma he’d just sustained. “Maybe I should get myself one.” Why is that _Hot_? Sicheng is already hot all on his own. It’s the hair. Maybe the smell? Or maybe the desperation of not having gotten any in a couple months. Taeyong can’t tell which is making it Worse, but it all leads to Bad in the end.

“Yeah, same,” agrees Taeyong distantly, and he’s not just now remembering a joke he’d made to Johnny earlier, he’d probably remembered it subconsciously when he’d gone over to Sicheng’s in the first place, totally not giving a fuck about loud music as long as it’s _good_ loud music.

It’s like something clicks, in the air between the two of them, Sicheng carefully finishing a portion of beef.

He almost misses the way Sicheng looks at him, sideways, that pretty flush back to his throat. Almost. “Did you feed me so we would fuck?” he asks in that slow way of his, levelling his gaze on Taeyong.

Taeyong thinks about this. There’s a flash of hesitation in his mind, just a flash, a well-angled face and a laugh that rings through dirty linoleum halls and aisles upon aisles of overpriced consumer products, someone with whom he can share his music without fear of judgment. He realises in a flash of inspiration that he can’t put that on Sicheng, not at the cost of their usual evening ritual, when both of them manage to be home for it. Not at the cost of their friendship, tentatively built over a long stretch of months and an ever-shortening language gap and mismatched schedules. “No.” He says it firmly. “No, I fed you ‘cause I feed you.”

“Oh.” Is that a hint of disappointment in Sicheng’s eyes? Taeyong furrows his brow, trying to find meaning in the sudden distance in his friend’s expression. Not that it matters. Sicheng isn’t one of those weird criminology investigation labs Taeyong has to do for class. He isn’t a piece of music that doesn’t sound right. And he isn’t a quick answer to Taeyong’s problems. “Sorry, I just thought--”

“No, shh, it’s fine,” and Taeyong scoots in closer, til they’re both side-by-side at the kitchen counter, bumping their shoulders together affectionately. “This just...isn’t that, you know? Let me take care of you.”

“I do not know,” Sicheng says, proper in his speech and his presentation as he plucks a piece of fried tofu from a bowl, ramrod straight and alluring as he’s ever been, but it does nothing. “I do know that you made really good food, and that we haven’t gotten to hang out lately. Not since you took the graveyard shift.”

“Oh, yeah, uh,” and Taeyong falters. “It’s just harder to get schoolwork done on time if I don’t come home and do it, and…”

“You don’t have to explain it.” Sicheng’s smile is the thing of myths, but Taeyong doesn’t fall for it any more than he normally would, the spell over him broken. Relief floods him right in the mouth, like a kick to the teeth that would knock them straight out. The dick might be the powerhouse of the creative flow, but that doesn’t matter so much anymore. “I get it. Do what you need to do.”

Taeyong knows, in the pit of his heart, as well as the pit contained between his legs, what it is he needs to do. “Do you wanna sit with me and eat and watch stuff?”

Sicheng’s grin only grows, til it encompasses the entirety of his face. “I really do.”

* * *

After the coffee shop is closed, and all the kids that work the front end are done with their labour-law mandated early shifts, Yuta calls a meeting out beside the loading docks, the only spot in the entire store where he can definitely have this conversation without being interrupted by people who actually care about the whole thing. In the message calling the meeting, he asks that the people in question bring their friends, so that everyone can be involved in the conversation. He has important things to say, after all.

They gather in a cluster around him, a circle of faces the likes of which he knows all too well. “What’s going on?” asks Donghyuck with a healthy amount of suspicion. “It’s cold out here and my ride is gonna be here soon.”

Everyone -- Jisung, Chenle, Jeno, Jaemin -- mumbles their collective agreement. Yuta sighs. The trouble of working with infants to bring down the system, he supposes. “Hey, yeah, so, I just wanted to talk about the video project.” He keeps his voice low, in case someone does happen to be nearby. There’s a delivery scheduled for tonight, close to midnight; he checked, on one of his breaks, something about which Doyoung hadn’t been super happy when he’d popped by to visit and had to have a conversation with Jaehyun instead. “We can’t take videos of customers anymore.” Jisung and Chenle, the main arbiters of this project and the ones taking everything above and beyond, sort of whine, their heads knocking together almost out of habit as they take their phones out of their pockets. Yuta takes a second to realise that they’re scrolling through their respective camera rolls, deleting videos. “Wait. Have you already _been_ taking videos of customers?”

“Just the ones that annoy Johnny,” chirps Jaemin, who’s doing the same, not that Yuta noticed, he being too focused on the task at hand and completely forgetting their involvement. “Anyway, why can’t we?”

Yuta shifts uncomfortably, tugging at the skin of his elbow. “Because I don’t want some other rich people coming in and owning this store,” he says simply. “It doesn’t make sense to undo some work only to let someone else do it again.”

Everyone hums in understanding, but in that vague way that Yuta does sometimes when Jaehyun is talking too much while they work together, or when Doyoung is memorising medical vocabulary out loud, or when literally anyone else in his life talks too much. Yuta realises, right now in this moment, that he is not a very good listener. Weird to see it reflected in the faces of a bunch of kids.

Nobody seems too happy about the declaration, but they’re listening nonetheless. That counts for something, right? “So those’re all deleted.” Jeno’s the first to look up, and Yuta’s soft for Jeno, though he probably shouldn’t be. Everyone’s soft for Jeno. It doesn’t feel right to go along with the crowd, especially on one person. “Sorry about that. We won’t do it again, promise.”

Yuta notes that everyone, in confirming this about their own future-viral-video databases, does not include Donghyuck. “I don’t have any videos that haven’t already been posted.” He sniffs, unimpressed with this whole thing. “Can we go now? I wanna go home.” And he’s an evil genius; Yuta had figured that out when they’d first met and Donghyuck had clowned him for his hair. “I kind of have something to do in the morning, and it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with you, so…”

Yuta rolls his eyes. “Yeah, you guys can go, I guess. Just. No more of that. Promise?” And he flashes his million-watt smile, holds out his pinky for Jeno.

When they all join pinkies in a circle, even Donghyuck, Yuta swears he can hear the cultish chants rising up in the background, and they should probably be lit by candlelight. 

He’s clearly been spending too much time with Doyoung, he thinks as his little flock disperses; he watches them go to the winds, like good future doombringers of the nation should, an inexplicable fondness welling up in his chest.

As he’s leaving, circling round the back parking lot and making the endless trip back to his car, his phone goes off in his back pocket. He has every intention of letting it rot, phones and the data they collect being the scourge of the earth and everything, but something reminds him that it’s important.

It’s Doyoung. Yuta resists the urge to skip when he sees that particular detail, both because it’s Fucking Stupid and because, judging by his mentally-set and decidedly haphazard schedule, it’s currently Doyoung Library Hours. Doyoung only ever texts during library hours when something important is going on.

It’s just one word. _Yes._

Yuta, for a moment, struggles to remember the context of a single yes. He really doesn’t even remember seeing Doyoung very much today? Other than when Doyoung had stopped by for a bit while Yuta was supposed to go on break, and he decided to feed the anticapitalist machine he’s always trying to run instead.

Oh. Fuck. He’d left Doyoung alone with Jaehyun, hadn’t he. Is that the yes? He _doesn’t understand the yes_ and it’s frazzling him, he groaning out loud as he reaches his car, still staring blankly into the screen of his phone. He wiggles at the sort-of-broken door handle a couple of times before the door comes open and plops in the driver’s seat, staring up at the sun roof, the faded upholstery on the car’s ceiling, trying so hard to decipher _yes_.

Finally, after way too much staring and a long, intense craving to go to the library and find Doyoung and shake him down for the answer personally, Yuta remembers.

He smiles, and digs up his keys from his pocket, and starts the car, already plotting what a date like that might look like.

**Author's Note:**

> please feel free to come harass me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/appiarian) about this because i Know there's so much more that won't ever make it into the confines of this fic


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